Gordon Parks

A Life Extraordinary:

Gordon Parks: Photographer

For American Legacy Magazine (Spring 2006), pp.27-40.

When I received the galley proof of Gordon Parks's most recent book, A Hungry Heart: A Memoir, this past fall, I found myself reading it with the same fervor I'd felt when I was devouring books as a young girl. It has the sort of can't-put-it-down attraction that used to leave me unaware of everything around me until I'd read the final page.

But Mr. Parks had already been on my mind for some time. Not in the usual way that a person of his stature stays fixed in one's thoughts, when attendant facts are at the ready---that he was born in 1912 in Kansas, the youngest of 15 children; that he is a world-renowned photographer and was in 1949 the first African-American lensman hired by Life magazine; that he has written numerous books and, as the director of the classic film Shaft, was the first black director of a movie produced by a major Hollywood studio; that he is an accomplished artist, poet, musician, and composer. No, it was his stint in Washington that had captivated me.

A few months ago I was doing some photo research in the online files of the Library of Congress when I came upon a photo---the photo, really. Parks called it American Gothic after Grant Wood's famous 1930 painting. It is an image you may have seen: A black woman stands in front of an American flag, a broom in her right hand, a mop propped against a desk to her left. Her plain dress and modest bearing most certainly recall the two stoic farm people in Wood's painting. Parks took the picture in 1942 when he was working for the Farm Security Administration, known as the FSA. His boss, Roy Stryker, had told him to record black life in the nation's capital, and Parks started with his own department's cleaning woman, Ella Watson. Stryker feared backlash from white Southerners in the FSA---after all, what was Parks trying to pull, sticking a black charwoman in front of the flag? "Stryker said, 'You've got the right idea, but you're going to get us all fired," the now 94year-old Parks told me in a telephone conversation last October. "He put it at the bottom of the pile. But he told me that I should stay with her, and I learned a lot by staying with her. He said you had to write cold and hard about black life in America and not allow whites to address the words with the consolation of a few tears." The same held for the images that went with the words.

That iconic image isn't the only one of Ella Watson in the Library of Congress archives. There is also Watson in her apartment, with her daughter and grandchildren, and Watson attending church services. Through these photos we see Ella Watson as someone other than a charwoman; she has a life beyond Parks's ironic emblem of the African-American as second-class citizen of the nation's capital.

It's not as if Gordon Parks's photographic work were hard to find. There's so much of it that almost anyone reading this would be hard-pressed to say he or she had not seen at least one image. His work for Life magazine is unforgettable---an expose of gang violence in Harlem; a chronicle of poverty in Brazil; photographic profIles of Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam---but there are also movie stars, celebrities, politicians, world leaders. He seems to have photographed every famous person of the twentieth century. In A Hungry Heart he gives us an inside view of some of his most memorable assignments.

But the early works, the hundreds of photographs in the Library of Congress archives, created for the FSA and the Office of War Information during the 1940s, show what Parks accomplished before he worked for Life. A photo of a student piling firewood at Bethune-Cookman College is ultimately an intimate portrait of a young African-American on the edge of adulthood. A black fireman rises from civil servant to heroic statue. And Ella Watson's daughter, reflected beautifully in a mirror, is the prototype, it seems, for a fashion photo Parks would take years later. ….

Parks's story spans nine decades and takes us through the 1930s Jim Crow years, the Depression, World War II, and the civil rights movement. More than a recollection of twentieth-century America, A Hungry Heart also reveals a private life. Parks writes plainly about his marriages, divorces, infidelities, the tragic death of his son, Gordon Parks, Jr., and the deep love and respect he had for his parents, Sarah and Jack.

Even after having created such a huge body of work, Parks has no plans for stopping. "When I have nothing to do, I feel lost," he says. "Now I am working on a collaboration with Yo-Yo Ma, a composition for cello. I met him a couple of times, and he said he wanted to do something with me, so we are. I've gotten the first movement finished; I might do two more." As to his writing: "I'm at the computer early in the morning working on another book of poetry. [An earlier volume, Eyes With Winged Thoughts, was recently published.] I wake up in the night and write down: "my thoughts. You better get it down while you have it." The following excerpts from A Hungry Heart show how Parks gets it down.

----Audrey Peterson

"My mother told me I should not come home complaining about something denied me because of my color," Parks told me. "If a white boy could do it, so could 1. And if I didn't do it well, could forget about coming home." His mother's tough standards clearly provided the young man who had just quit a job as a railroad porter with the inspiration and courage to walk into a white-owned dress shop in Minneapolis in 1938 and ask for a position photographing fashions.

Vogue was one of the magazines Well-to-do passengers left on the train. I studied the fashion photographs in it with fierce concentration. I went to every large department store in the Twin Cities asking for a chance to photograph their merchandise, without success. But I kept trying.

On St. Peter Street stood Frank Murphy's establishment---the most exclusive women's store in the Northwest. Even to this day I can't say why, but I walked through the door and asked for Frank Murphy. A tall man in a handsome gray suit eyed me as though I were a bug, and his voice was loaded with ice. "I'm Mr. Murphy. What can I do for you?" "I'd like to shoot fashions for you, sir."

"We don't need anyone for that."

He was ushering me out the door when a woman intervened. "What does the young man want, Frank?"

"He wants to shoot fashions. I told---"

"Well, Frank, how do you know he can't shoot fashions?" Frank groaned as she motioned me to a large ornate chair. "I’m Mrs. Murphy. Sit down. Now tell me the truth. Can you really shoot fashions?"

"Yes, ma'am," I lied. A wave of fright swept through me, and I felt as though I were being cross-examined while perched on a hostile throne.

"Do you have any of your work with you?"

"No, ma'am. It's all back home." Frank groaned again.

After a few moments she shocked me, and Frank. "Well, we are going to give you a chance. How many models do you want?"

"Ah-, ah-three."

"And how many gowns?"

"Ah---12."

"Fine. You come back here after six o'clock day after tomorrow, and we'll be ready for you."

Harvey Goldstein, who owned a small camera shop, looked at me with astonishment when I hurried to him for help. "Are you daffy, man? You don't have a decent camera, lights, or film-and you've never shot fashions."

"That's why I'm here, Harvey. You can help with all that."

"But I don't know beans about shooting fashions."

"Don't worry. I’ll take care of that. Just help me, Harvey."

At the appointed time he dumped me and the equipment in front of Frank Murphy's, and fled. The large Speed Graphic camera he had lent me was in the hands of a complete stranger.

The models and gowns were waiting, and before long I was shooting away. Mrs. Murphy, sitting in a corner, was impressed. Mr. Murphy, scowling from the shadows, also seemed impressed. Even I was impressed---until a laboratory technician called to say that all the frames, except one, had been double---exposed. At one o'clock in the morning Sally [Parks's wife] came to the kitchen and found out why my head was violently banging against the wall. Her suggestion gave me courage. "Well, that good one is beautiful. Why not show that to them?"

I called Harvey and told him what had happened.

"Man, it's three o'clock in the morning."

"I know. But I've got to have a big print of that good one. And I want it standing on that easel of yours, and in front of the store when they arrive tomorrow morning. Please, Harvey, don't let me down."

"Okay. Get your ass over here."

At half past eight in the morning, the easel holding the photograph stood at the entrance…waiting. Harvey sat in his car. I stood a few feet away with my heart beating like a drum. . . waiting. Mr. and Mrs. Murphy arrived. After a look she clasped her hands and shrieked with delight. I stepped from the shadows with an uneasy smile on my face.

"Where are the others? I can't wait to see them."

"I'm awfully sorry, Mrs. Murphy." Apologetically, I told, her what had happened.

"Would they all have been that good?"

"Oh, that: one's probably the worst of the lot."

"Well, if you 'don't mind; we'll just do it all over again."

I sure didn't mind. We did it all over again---successfully. By the month's end my work hung on Frank Murphy's walls and windows.

Marva Louis, the wife of the world's heavyweight boxing champion, was on the phone, and I was overwhelmed. "Mrs. Murphy gave me your number, and I'm calling to congratulate you on your photographs. I saw them at her store this afternoon."

"Oh, thank you. Thank you very much."

"Frankly, you're wasting your time here. And she agrees with me. Think about coming to Chicago. I could get you a lot of work there. I'd love to see you, but I'm leaving here tonight. It's too cold up here."

"I'll sure think about that. Thank you. Thank you." After giving me her number in Chicago she hung up.

Sally had been cooking during the conversation. "Well, who was that?"

"Joe Louis's wife."

"Oh, and what did she have to say?"

"She was complimenting me on my pictures at Murphy's. Both of them think I'm wasting my time here. She even promised to get me work if I came to Chicago. I can't believe it. . . Joe Louis's wife!"

"Well?"

"I'm going to give it a lot of thought." The check Mrs. Murphy had given me deserved a lot of thought. It said: This is how rich you could be. I needed the money. My family was growing. Our daughter Toni was born on November 4,1940.

In 1942, after receiving a grant from the Julius Rosenwald Fund, Parks wentI to work as a photographer in the history section of the Farm Security Administration in Washington, D.C. Until his arrival, the department, run by Roy Stryker, had been all-white. Many of its members were in for a surprise, but so was Parks when he tried to familiarize himself with his new city. I

Washington was ready for me, but Stryker was still doubtful about my being ready for Washington. The FSA offices were housed in a historical redbrick building at 14th Street and Independence Avenue. I was at sea during my first morning there. I had been hoping to meet the photographers whose names were imbedded in me, but they were off on assignments in different parts of the country. Stryker invited me into his office, and I was nervously sipping tea when he leaned back in his chair, smiling. "Welcome. We are delighted I to have you here. Now, Gordon, tell me, what do you know about this place?"

I knew very little about "this place." My vague answers were proof of that.

"Well, it's the nation's capital, and the White House, where the President lives, is here, and some very important politicians, and some Presidents are buried here. I've never been here before."

"Okay, I understand." He puffed on a cigarette

"I'm going to give you your very first assignment---and it's to be without your camera. Several blocks up the street is Julius Garfinckel's department store. You can't miss it. It gets very cold here during winter. So buy yourself a heavier coat. On the corner directly across the street is a restaurant called White's House. Have lunch. I've never eaten there but I'm told the food's good. Go try it out."

"White House?"

"Nope, White's House. Just a couple of doors from there is a theater where a very important motion picture is showing. Go see it and let me know what you think. That's all. Okay?"

"Well, okay." The look on my face held a question mark.

"All this might seem a bit trivial, but it's important."

"Yes, sir."

Men's coats were on Julius Garfinckel's third floor, and that floor was practically empty when I reached it, except for three salesmen who stood idle, ignoring my presence. I motioned to one. "I'm looking for a coat. Could you help me?"

"We don't have your size."

"How do you know my size? You haven't measured me."

"Sorry. We don't have your size."

Anger bit me with sharp teeth. A white sofa facing the elevator doors beckoned to me, and I went to it and flopped down, as though I intended to sleep.

"What are you doing?"

"Waiting for the manager of this joint."

In a few minutes the elevator doors opened and he was there, smiling.

"Can I help you, sir?"

I smiled. "Just resting until one of your clerks decides to find me a coat."

Flustered, he gave an order. "Hubert. Find the gentleman a coat."

My point was made and I arose. "I wouldn't have one of your damn coats if you gave it to me." I pressed a button, the elevator door opened, and I left Garfnckel's, never to return. Julius Gartinckel's message to Julius Rosenwald's new fellow had come through unmistakably clear.

All eyes in White's House lifted toward me when I walked in and sat down at a table. They stayed on me as a waiter came to reproach me. "Don't you know Negroes can't eat here? If you want food you'll have to go to the back door."

The place had been properly named. I didn't want food that badly. I left and went to the theater instead.

And there I was to learn something else---and from the ticket seller. "Negroes aren't allowed here."

By now Stryker's assignment was telling me something---and in a hurry. I was not ready for Washington. Roy was buttoning up to leave when I came to the office. The staff had left for the day. Only a black charwoman remained, and she was sweeping the floor. He glanced at me.

"I didn't expect you back so soon," he said. "I thought you'd be out seeing the town for a couple of days."

"I've seen enough of it in one morning," I replied sullenly. "I want my cameras."

"What do you intend to do with them?"

"I want to show the rest of the world what your great city of Washington, D.C., is really like. I want. . ."

"Okay, okay." The hint of that smile was on his face again. "You can't just take a picture of a white salesman or waiter or ticket seller and just say they are prejudiced. Bigots have a way of looking like everyone. Some even look better. You have to verbalize your feelings first, then find a way to express them in pictures. Talk to older black people who have spent a lifetime experiencing what you went through this afternoon. Do you understand what I'm getting at?"

"I think I do."

"Fine. Do something about it. Study the picture files in this place. There are thousands of examples waiting to lend you a hand. Go home and put what you went through on paper. Images and words can come together in many ways." Then he was gone.

"Do something about it. Do something abpit it." His advice had left my heart beating like an angry drum. An elderly black woman's voice shook me out of the silence.

"Good evening, young man. You're new around here. Never seen you before." The charwoman was still sweeping as she talked.

"Just came," I answered. "How long have you been here?"

"Seems like all my life at times. Born down South. Been here for about 20 years."

"How do you like Washington?"

"Can't say I'm loving it, but I'm muddling through."

"My name's Gordon---Gordon Parks."

"I'm Ella Watson."

"Could you spare me a few minutes? I'm to be a photographer here, and I'd like to know a little about your life."

She smiled and shook her head. "Take more than a few minutes for that. I'm a grandma. What do you want to know?"

"Oh, anything you want to tell me."

Leaning on her mop handIe, she agreed. And what she told me was like a bad dream: a father lynched by Southern mobsters, a mother's untimely death, marriage and pregnancy while she was in high school, a husband shot two days before their daughter's birth, a teenage daughter's bearing two illegitimate children, then finally a grandchild stricken with paralysis. Now she was bringing up two grandchildren on wages barely enough for one. By comparison my experiences were akin to a peaceful afternoon. Then suddenly something unforgettable blossomed in my memory-American Gothic, Grant Wood's painting. "Would you allow me to photograph you?"

"In an old dress like this?"

"Yes. Just the way you are."

"All right. Where would you like for me to stand?"

I took out my camera. A huge American flag hung from the ceiling to the floor. "Stand right in front of that flag." I placed a broom in one hand and a mop in the other. "Now look straight into my camera, and think about what you just told me." Fifteen minutes passed before I stopped photographing her. "Thank you very much, Mrs. Watson."

"It's all right. Now I'd better get back to work."

Two mornings later I put the photograph on Stryker's desk. His face wrinkled into a frown, then a half-smile. ."Well, you're getting the idea, but you're likely to get us all fired. What's the title for it?"

"American Gothic"

"Keep working with her. It will do you some good." He was right. For a month my camera went on collecting the normal events that touched her life---her home, her church, or any place that happenstance led her to. Stryker, after viewing my progress, said what I had longed to hear. "This shows it. You can involve yourself in people's problems. Ella Watson has done you a great service."

There were some politicians who objected to American Gothic finding a place in the FSA files. One Southern congressman snarled his opinion: "It amounts to an indictment of America." Perhaps he was right. Some photographs are often accused of telling the truth. For several years Ella Watson's portrait was to rest alone in the darkness of an obscure file. But its existence was already intertwined with the future.

After a stint with the Office of war Information, during which Parks traveled with the Tuskegee Airmen of the 332d Fighter Group, he found himself in Harlem looking for work. Luck, talent, and his characteristic chutzpah landed him a job with Vogue.

Alexander Liberman was the art director for Conde Nast, the publishers of Glamour and Vogue. He welcomed me into his plush office and offered me a seat. After shuffling through my photographs, he spread them out on his desk and examined them very slowly. "They are good-very good."

"Thank you, sir."

He smiled warmly. "Well, we are going to have to find an assignment for you." He picked up the phone and dialed. "Tina, come to my office right away. I'd like for you to meet someone." Tina Fredericks, one of his top editors, arrived several minutes later. He introduced us, then motioned at my photographs.

Tina took a long look. "Beautiful, Alex. Simply beautiful"

"Fine. Take him around to meet the other editors----and find him some work." It had happened so unexpectedly, so quickly.

Alex Liberman and Tina Fredericks brought me along slowly and carefully. At first all I was given to shoot was casual clothes for Glamour; it was six months before I photographed for Vogue.

The Vogue issue on the fall collections was Liberman's gift for my efforts. I had eight pages of color in that issue. Soon after the edition hit the newsstands, I was enjoying compliments from every quarter. I was basking in them when a telegram from St. Paul gave me a delightful jolt.

"Dear Gordon, see you're not double exposing anymore. Your spread in Vogue is terrific. Congratulations. I'll be in New York this weekend. How about dinner at the Plaza? Love, Madeline."

Madeline! Madeline Murphy! Years had passed, but the memories had not. That weekend found us in the Plaza Hotel's Oak Room. We were enjoying roasted squab when I asked the question that had haunted me for a long time. "Tell me, Madeline, why did you come to my rescue when Frank was kicking me out the door? You had never seen me before, and you knew I was lying about my having taken fashion pictures."

She smiled. "Those 10 pages in Vogue prove that you weren't lying. Furthermore, I was mad as hell at Frank about something that day. And I suppose I was just getting back at him."

"Believe me, Madeline. I'm sure glad that you was mad." We laughed as our wineglasses lifted to the past. But I knew better. She was simply helping an eager young-man, and his color was without meaning.

Frank Murphy had built another store, in Wayzata, Minnesota, and she wanted me to help celebrate its opening. She offered me a round-trip plane ticket, and the thought of seeing my family in Minneapolis made me accept her offer immediately. Pauline Trigere and Mr. John, both renowned fashion designers, were also invited. The three of us flew from New York the following week. Smiling, Madeline greeted us as we entered. Then she pointed at a huge blowup of a picture, standing alone on the wall. It was the one photograph that had escaped those double exposures. "That, my dear friend, has become our good-luck piece. Our stores wouldn't be caught without it." A vast crowd had gathered, and we joined it. It was like a fairy tale. The next glorious four days with Sally and the children made me long for us to be a family again. But I just didn't have the money to do it. Working for Vogue brought glory but little cash-my freelancer's pay was small and irregular.

Although he was working both for Vogue and for Roy Stryker, who had taken a job as the director of a photo documentation project at Standard Oil of New Jersey, Parks was not satisfied; he wanted to do something with impact, something for his people. In 1949 he walked right into the office of Life magazine's hard-nosed picture editor.

I had come to terms with Richard Wright's words "We are at the crossroads." Black people were on the move against racism. I wanted to move with them. The right forum was uncertain, neither the chic pages of Vogue nor the conservative offices of Standard Oil held the answer. A vast and restless audience was waiting. The problem was to move within range of its understanding. Life magazine was the most likely prospect, but a multitude of white photographers had tried and failed to join the staff of that prestigious publication.

Unannounced, and a bit nervous, I entered the picture editor's office. Wilson Hicks, indisputably Life's toughest editor, looked at me with consternation. "How'd you get in here?"

"I just walked in."

"Well, just walk out."

"I wanted to show you some pictures, and I was afraid I couldn't get an appointment."

"You don't walk into someone's office without asking first."

"Sorry. Can't you take a quick look?"

After giving me a long look he put on his glasses. "Okay, let me see them. I've only got a few minutes." He looked at one. . . and kept on looking. My nervousness subsided when he picked up his phone and summoned two people to his office. Hicks was still shuffling through my portfolio when they came in. "This is Sally Kirkland, our fashion editor, and John Dille, our story editor. What's your name?"

"Parks-Gordon Parks."

Hicks shoved the pictures toward them, lit a cigarette, and waited for comments. Kirkland was the first to speak. "They're great, Wilson. I've seen his work in Vogue. We don't have any fashion photographers on the staff, and the Paris collections are only a few months away."

Dille's appraisal was brief but reassuring. "They're damn good. Have you a picture story in mind?" I

I had been caught off guard, but I quickly concocted one. "Yes, I do. Gang wars are hot up in Harlem. Black kids need to see the stupidity of killing each other."

Hicks wasn't impressed. "That amounts to freezing snowballs in hell. We tried that last year and fell flat on our tails."

"How about letting me try?"

After a lengthy silence he removed his glasses and gave in. "Okay, I'll go along with you, but I can only offer $500."

I was astounded. "Only $500? That---"

Dille cut in quickly. "Take it. I'll see to it that everything works out." We were outside Hicks's office when he softly explained, "You will be working with an unlimited expense account."

Trying to halt the youthful slaughter in Harlem would be more than another journalistic venture on my part. I still felt the torment the death of my friends had lent to my own childhood. Now there was an opportunity to do something about it.

Life continued to give Parks a chance to do something significant. A 1956 assignment covering segregation and racial unrest in the Deep South almost got him and others lynched in the process, thanks to a treacherous colleague.

Segregation, that poison left over from r slavery, was still feeding racial unrest to America when I was sent South to cover it. I was to concentrate on the black man's most relentless enemy. I didn't go alone. Sam Yette, a young black journalism student who knew the area well, was to meet me in Birmingham, Alabama.

Having entered the bastion of Klansmen and lynchings, I waited for Sam that first morning on a red clay country road outside the city where a black cabby had dropped me. Rows of wooden weather-beaten houses made up a neighborhood for blacks. Two barefoot boys with fishing poles passed by with a skinny hound following them. It was growing late, and I was becoming impatient when a car pulled up and came to an abrupt stop. A young man got out, smiled, and shook my hand. "I'm Sam Yette. Sorry to be late, but your bureau chief never showed up. So I decided to come without him."

"Strange. Phone him and find out what happened."

"No phone booths around here. We'll have to find one further down the road." Sam seemed to possess all the requirements I had hoped for. He appeared to be intelligent, friendly, and knowledgeable about the area in which I would be working. He found a phone and talked to my Life contact; then, after a few minutes, he turned to me with trouble on his face. "Something wrong, Sam?"

"Yep, very, very wrong. The person he's referring you to as a guide and protective source is a member of the White Citizens Council. And that group is worse than the Ku Klux Klan. I can't believe it."

"Did you let him know that you are aware of this?" ;

"Nope. I think it's better not to. But your Life man bears watching." (There are some rare instances in my existence when truth is best not spoken. So let it be with this man in question. From now on I will refer to him as "Freddie.")

Dusk had fallen. We were in Freddie's car in a secluded part of the city where we had finally met. I spoke guardedly. "I've got a tough assignment, Freddie. Racial tension is so thick down here you can cut it with a knife."

He gave me a weak handshake, then stunned me with words I found unbelievable. "Frankly, I feel that your assignment is misguided. There's hardly enough segregation in Birmingham to warrant it." The following morning the local NAACP confirmed Sam's information about the White Citizens Council. The next day we were being followed. It was a bit frightening to spot the battered red station wagon with three white toughs a half block from our rooming house every morning. But the subject matter was plentiful, and it kept my camera constantly at work.

Drinking fountain downtown side walks were boldly marked WHITE ONLY or BLACK ONLY. Waiting rooms in train and bus stations displayed signs of confusion: INTERSTATE WHITE INTRASTATE BLACK. And there were those fearsome tales about blacks who had dared to disobey those signs.

The story was in need of a change of scenery. Sam and I had slipped out of the city in the middle of the night and arrived! at the small hamlet of Anniston, Alabama. It was an. unbearably hot morning. We were drinking Cokes on the porch, o~ a country store when a thin black man, stumbled up the steps with a load of twigs on his back. Exhausted and covered with sweat, he swayed for a moment, then collapsed beside us and dropped the twigs to the ground. Sam spoke to him soothingly. "Like a cold drink, brother?"

"Can't afford it. Down. to my last nickel."

"Not. to worry. It's on me." Sam went into the store and returned with a cold Coke for him. "Enjoy it. What's your name?"

"Causey. Willie Causey."

"You live around here?"

"Yep. Do a bit of sharecroppin' down the road."

Willie Causey, after consuming another Coke, two hot dogs, and some cordial persuasion by Sam, became my assignment.

The roads we took to his place were eroded by water and time. His home, a two-room shack with a tiny kitchen, tin roof, and sagging porch, sat at the bend of a dirt road. Rain began to fall, and the clay surrounding it was so red it seemed to be bleeding. Willie and his wife slept in one room. Their five children---two boys and three girls---slept on one bed in the other. A rickety table and seven chairs were the results of Willie's inept attempt at carpentry. A secondhand icebox, Mrs. Causey's prize possession, took up most of the kitchen. An iron cauldron for washing clothes sat in the backyard, but there was very little clothing to wash. Willie cut pines, and after giving the white bosses their monthly share of the cuttings he was left with about $25 for greens, potatoes, and hog fat.

We stayed on for a week, recording the family's struggle to survive. The front porch served as our beds. The children were so listless and slow-moving it seemed as if old age were closing in on them. They appeared to be unaware of any other kind of life. The smallest radio wasn't there to put them in touch with the black voices who were rallying against the bigotry and poverty that had ensnared them. The Causeys were hopelessly trapped in a wilderness where Klansmen burned crosses, where fear and hunger were the way of life. But black fingers that picked cotton for centuries had knotted into one iron fist. And that fist was about to pound the Southland with murderous anger.

On the seventh morning Willie stood shaking his head as worry clouded his face. "Something wrong, Williie?"

"People roun' here are askin' about you and Sam. Some awful mean crackers in this place." The message was clear. Hurriedly Sam and I headed toward Birmingham---luckily by a back road. On the main highway a flatbed truck was carrying six white ruffians toward Willie Causey's house. They were carrying rope, tar, and feathers.

"Some awful mean crackers in this place." Willie’s words were glued to my conscience, and they were asking a question that I passed on to Freddie when we met again. "What’s going to happen to Willie Causey when our story is published?"

"Don't worry. I'll be in constant touch with them." There wasn't a single reason to believe him or to feel reassured4 We said good-bye; then Sam and I headed toward the railway station. The night train to Nashville was due within the hour. In Nashville I was to photograph a college professor boarding a bus in the segregated area of a bus station. Freddie promised to be there, but he preferred to drive to Nashville by himself. Another doubtful promise left his lips. "Meet you at the bus station around two."

Sam had a lower berth. I suggested that he share my compartment, where the door could be locked. When he refused I took the exposed film for safekeeping and went to sleep. The train was less than an hour out of Birmingham when I heard the scuffling. Sam was being attacked by two men. I reached his side wielding an oversized flashgun against the neck of one of the ruffians. They both fled as the train came to a stop. It was obvious now. Someone was after the exposed film. That someone was none other than Freddie.

Irene Saint, Life's chief of domestic correspondents, Was astounded when she heard of the problems that had plagued me. She defended Freddie adamantly. "It is ridiculous. He would never do such ghastly things."

I regretted her having knowledge of the situation, but my answer was firm. "We can put the matter on Henry Luce's desk if you like."

The matter was dropped, until the day after the story was published. Anniston's townspeople then came down on Willie Causey with true Southland wrath. Distraught, he telephoned me collect and spilled out his problems. "They took our house and everything we own, then they sent us walkin' the highway to Birmingham. You gotta help me. I ain't got a penny to my name."

"Did you call Freddie?"

"Yes. He promised to help, but I never heard from him again."

"Call tomorrow around noon. I'll work something out for you. Don't worry, Willie."

The bureau found out that Freddie had taken his family on a month's vacation.. Hugh Moffett and Dick Stolley, two Life editors, hurriedly flew to Anniston in an attempt to get the Causeys' belongings returned to them. They were met in Jhe mayor's front yard by a welcoming committee with shotguns and rifles. "Why the guns, fellas?" Moffett asked.

"Goin' rabbit huntin'" was the reply.

The mayor turned out to be a lady who spoke with crushing authority. "If Willie cares about his life, he'll stay out of this town. And if we'd caught the nigger who took those pictures we'd 'a' tarred and feathered him and set him on fire!"

But you might say that things ended reasonably well for Willie. Life relocated his family and gave them $25,000---indeed, a sharecropper's dream. He took half. His wife took half. Then Willie and his wife did something they had longed to do for a long, long time. They told each other good-bye. As for Freddie, he was brought back to 'New York and given an inconsequential desk outside of an inconsequential office. Then one day he disappeared altogether. There's no doubting that he came close to dropping me in the well of death. And at times I wonder why I still hide his given name. It's like a thorn clinging to my memory.

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