Born Black: A Personal Report on the Decade of Black Revolt 1960–1970
The expanded Steidl edition of Gordon Parks's 1971 Born Black, the first book to unite his photography and his writing in a firsthand account of the civil rights and Black Power movements of the 1960s.
The book gathers the nine series Parks produced for Life between 1963 and 1970: a rare look inside San Quentin State Prison, extensive documentation of the Black Muslim movement and the Black Panthers, reflections on the deaths of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr., portraits of Stokely Carmichael, Muhammad Ali and Eldridge Cleaver, and the daily life of Harlem's Fontenelle family. Co-published with The Gordon Parks Foundation and edited by Peter W. Kunhardt, Jr. and Michal Raz-Russo, this clothbound, 304-page edition expands the 1971 Lippincott original with additional photographs from each series, spreads from the first edition, early correspondence, reproductions of the related Life articles, and new essays by Jelani Cobb and Nicole R. Fleetwood.
Parks (1912–2006), the first Black staff photographer at Life and also a novelist, composer and filmmaker (Shaft), left an unmatched record of American life centered on race, poverty and the struggle for justice. Born Black is a cornerstone of that legacy and joins Steidl and the Foundation's ongoing series of his books, among them Segregation Story.
