Out of the Archives 3: Profiles of Gordon Parks, leading Black American photographer of the 20th century
The US Information Agency (USIA) was a Cold War propaganda and public diplomacy agency. The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) contains a large collection of USIA’s film, photography, and textual records, with many of these holdings still to be explored. As I make research visits to NARA, I’ll be sharing occasional updates of my discoveries, especially those materials related to post-independence Africa, from the USIA archives.
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In the previous installment of Out of the Archives (№2), I mentioned USIA’s efforts to promote African American photographers specifically for African audiences, one of whom was Gordon Parks (1912–2006). Parks overcame an impoverished childhood to become one of the leading photographers of his time. He started out in fashion and studio photography and branched out into documentary photography that often addressed issues of poverty, inequality, and discrimination. One of his photos from a series documenting the segregated South was selected recently for inclusion by the New York Times in the 25 photos that defined the modern age.
Parks was the first Black staff photographer at Life, regularly producing impactful photo-essays for the magazine for several decades. Extraordinarily enough, he was also a composer, author, and film director. In 1967, USIA profiled Parks in Topic magazine (№12), the periodical produced for African audiences, as “A Man of Many Talents, A famous photographer who also became a novelist, poet and musician.”
Parks’ first film was The Learning Tree (1969), adapted from his own semi-autobiographical coming-of-age novel. This was reported to be the first time an African American served as producer and director for a major studio film (on which he also served as screenwriter and composer). USIA commissioned a 30-minute film profile of him the same year called My Father: Gordon Parks.
The film is told through the perspective of his son, Gordon Parks Jr., who’s the stills photographer on The Learning Tree. It starts with Parks Jr.’s voice-over as he drives to and walks onto the film set. He describes his father as having experienced “all the tragedies and struggles that go along with being a Black man in America.” My Father then goes on to provide an extensive behind-the-scenes look at the film shoot and includes interviews with Gordon Parks, his wife, actors, and members of the crew. An electrician and painter, both Black, reference the director’s commitment to hiring Black crew members (claiming this has resulted in the most Black crew members on a production in the history of the film industry). My Father concludes with Parks Jr. again, this time speaking directly to camera about how observing his father’s multiple talents provides him an “incentive to apply myself in many areas.”
NARA’s catalog describes the film as a “Today” featurette. The Today series was one of, if not the, first USIA film series produced on largely African subjects for Africa audiences. “This series,” according to NARA, “consists of film news reports that focus primarily on African modernization, nation-building, self-help, and U.S. aid projects. The remainder of the films depict US policies regarding Africa and other parts of the world, and American life, culture, equality of opportunity, and freedom of choice.”
Today began production in 1957 and continued through more than 160 episodes until about 1970. The initial episodes were in a 20-minute typical newsreel style that included several unrelated stories, used voice-over narration and relatively little recorded sound, and did not credit production team members. In its later years, the episode running times had shortened to 10 minutes made up of 1–2 stories. Today films were shown at USIA-sponsored screenings, shared with schools and other partners, and screened in local cinemas. A 1961 USIA annual report to Congress says the film magazine reached 1,300 theaters for an “audience of 30 million in the new [recently independent] African countries.”
In the final days of Today, USIA produced several so-called featurettes of varying lengths, each focused solely on one subject. The longer running time and first-person perspective of My Father distinguish it from these other productions. USIA contracted New York-based industrial film company Allegro Productions to produce My Father. Allegro appears to have taken over production of the Today series from newsreel specialists Hearst Metrotone in the mid-1960s.
Notable credits on the film are producer Meyer (Mike) Odze, who specialized in documentary and educational films; and cinematographer Morton Heilig, who apparently was a pioneer in virtual reality technology. USIA’s extensive relations with industrial film companies and independent documentary filmmakers for its film production is something I will explore in future installments.
Separately, there’s also a 4-minute clip covering the filming of The Learning Tree produced for the USIA Washington Correspondent series. This material is of scenes from Parks’ production, which were shot on location in the director’s hometown in Kansas and was accompanied by a Spanish narration. There’s not a lot of documentation about the Washington Correspondent series, but the NARA catalog describes it as “motion picture films designed for exhibition or broadcast in Africa, South America, Portugal, and Spain” mostly in English but sometimes in foreign languages.
After The Learning Tree, Parks went on to direct the ground-breaking blaxploitation 1971 film Shaft . . .though there’s no evidence that USIA supported that!
