Gordon Parks' 1956 Alabama Photo Essay Documents Segregation Era for LIFE Magazine

In 1956, photographer Gordon Parks was commissioned by LIFE magazine to document racial tensions in Alabama during the Montgomery bus boycotts. Parks, who had experienced segregation growing up in Kansas, compared conditions in the South with his relatively integrated life in Europe. Arriving in Mobile, Alabama, in the summer of 1956, Parks worked with reporter Sam Yette and a local LIFE contact referred to as "Freddie." Their assignment nearly collapsed when Freddie introduced them to a supposed protector who turned out to be a leader of a white supremacist group. Parks eventually focused on Willie Causey, a Black lumberjack and sharecropper in Shady Grove, Alabama, who had achieved modest financial stability with his wife Allie, a schoolteacher. Over several weeks, Parks photographed the Causey family at home and work, also capturing images of Allie's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Albert Thornton, in Mobile. The project expanded to document segregated facilities, including "colored" waiting rooms and water fountains. Parks and Yette faced direct threats, including a physical assault after Yette drank from a "whites-only" fountain in Birmingham. The resulting photo essay, "The Restraints: Open and Hidden," was published in LIFE on September 24, 1956. Following publication, the Causey family faced severe retaliation: their property was seized, and they were forced from their home. Parks ensured LIFE provided them with support. The article also includes excerpts from Parks' 1963 essay "A Long Search for Pride," where he reflects on his childhood experiences with racism and his career as a photographer, which he chose partly because it was work he could do "without the consent of white people." The images and texts are part of the exhibition "Gordon Parks – A América sou eu" at IMS Paulista and are published in ZUM magazine #21, drawing from Gordon Parks: Collected Works (Steidl, 2017).