Born Black

the long version

Photographer and filmmaker Gordon Parks, a black man at ease with himself and with the white world, was able to communicate across the boundaries of race--a significant accomplishment in the racial polarization of the 1960s. This book is an intense and compassionate study of that polarization. Composed not only of articles commissioned by Life magazine but also material which appears here for the first time, this is a personal account of some of the men and movements from the decade of black revolution--1960 to 1970. Here is a report on the Black Muslims and an arresting glimpse of Malcolm X; an intimate portrait of Stokely Carmichael and another of Muhammad Ali, born Cassius Clay; a moving reflection on the death of Martin Luther King, Jr.; a glimpse into the life of a Harlem family. "I came to each story with a strong sense of involvement, finding it difficult to screen out my own memories of a scarred past," Parks writes. His own intense feeling, growing out of what he has become, is stamped on almost every page. The knowledge of the special perils and consequences of having been born black that the author shares with his subjects is, in the end, the real substance of this book--in the text and in the stunning photographs which accompany it.--From publisher description.