American Gothic

Gordon Parks (1912–2006) was one of the twentieth century’s preeminent American photographers. Beginning in the 1940s and through the dawn of the twenty-first century, he created work that focused on social justice, race relations, the civil rights movement and the African American experience. Born into poverty and segregation in Fort Scott, Kansas, Parks won a Julius Rosenwald Fund fellowship in 1942, and went on to create groundbreaking work for the Farm Security Administration and magazines such as Ebony, Vogue and Life, where he was staff photographer for more than two decades. Beyond his work in photography, Parks was a respected film director, composer, memoirist, novelist and poet, who left behind an exceptional body of work that is a powerful record and interpretation of American life and culture. Ella Watson (1883–1980) is best known for the seminal 1942 photographs Gordon Parks made of her while he was on a fellowship at the Farm Security Administration in Washington, D.C. Among her own community she was a strong woman of faith who worked hard at a series of menial government cleaning jobs to support her family. Born Ellen Hearns in Washington on 29 March 1883, she grew up in the segregated nation’s capital and was married at 18 to George Watson. She was a devoted mother, grandmother and great-grandmother, who raised three generations of children, and a long-standing member of the Verbrycke Spiritual Church. Watson’s brief collaboration with Parks helped write one of the most powerful stories of African American labor, family and devotion during World War II and the early years of the American civil rights movement.