Untitled, Rosa Parks, March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, Washington, D.C.,

August 28, 1963, printed 2017

Gordon Parks, the first African American staff photographer at <em>Life</em> magazine, covered the August 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where demonstrators from across the country gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial to protest continuing inequalities faced by African Americans. More than three thousand members of the press covered what was at the time the largest demonstration in the nation’s capital. In these two portraits of protesters set apart from the crowd, Parks shifts the visual emphasis away from the civil rights movement’s charismatic leader to capture the contributions of individual citizens. Poignant images of individuals facilitated the empathy that Parks believed could undo the concept of difference that drove racism and segregation.