• Gordon Parks was an artist who shed light on important aspects of American culture, such as race relations, poverty, and civil rights, through what he called his “weapons,” the camera and the pen. 

• In his photo essay “Segregation in the Deep South,” Parks chose Willie Causey, a woodworker in Choctaw County, AL and his family as the focus of his story.

• According to Parks’s notes, after his story ran, Choctaw County citizens attacked Willie and his family and ran them out of town with the threat, “It’s the rope for you if you try comin’ back!” Life acted promptly to help the family resettle in another part of the South.

• This is one of 128 photographs donated to Kansas State University by Parks in 1972. The original version was a black-and-white photograph mounted on Masonite hardboard, which was slowly deteriorating. In 2017, the Gordon Parks Foundation provided a new archival print as part of a conservation partnership with the Beach Museum of Art. It was discovered that Parks had used color film to shoot the Causey image.