It was not just Parks’ ability to make technically strong photographs that makes his work as powerful as it is. Rather, it was also his ability to connect with his subjects in a way that other photographers could not that gave him insight into the stories he covered and a relationship with his subjects.
In his essay in Pittsburg Grease Plant, Philip Brookman explains:
“He had experienced the camaraderie of hard labor in the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Depression and had worked segregated jobs on the Northern Pacific Railway with little possibility of advancement. He connected to the Black grease cookers through this shared experience. Though he was prevented from documenting Black soldiers in combat, Parks’ photographs promoted the ambitions and importance of African American labor during the war. By creatively focusing on the decisive role of Black workers in the production of Eisenhower grease, he issued a powerful yet subversive message that also proved highly successful for SONJ’s photography project.”
Ten years later, in the summer of 1956, Parks was sent by LIFE magazine to Alabama to document the realities of African Americans living under Jim Crow.
The story for LIFE was undertaken two years after the 1954 Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. The Board of Education, which ended the practice of legal segregation in schools. The ruling also helped establish the precedent that “separate-but-equal” was far from equal in education and other services.
Parks’ story also came after the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott, which began when Rosa Parks was arrested and fined for refusing to give up her seat for a white person and move to the back of a public city bus. During the boycott, African Americans refused to ride the buses in Montgomery, Alabama, to protest their segregated seating. The boycott eventually led to the Supreme Court, whose decision in Browder v. Gayle in December of 1956 upheld a lower court ruling that segregation on buses was unconstitutional.
In Parks’ photographs, we see the daily lives of African Americans under segregation. Separate water fountains bear clear labels as to who may drink. A Black family is forced to get their ice cream from a distinct window on the side of an ice cream shop. A segregated entrance to a movie theater remains, with its own brightly lit neon sign. A group of young children look through a fence at a Ferris wheel and other amusements that they are clearly not invited to.