We Are Family: The Directors
A.O. Scott, The New York Times Style Magazine
April 2020
IN 1968, 20 YEARS after he was hired as Life’s first African-American staff photographer, Gordon Parks prepared to demolish another color line. “You’re about to become Hollywood’s first black director,” he was told by Kenneth Hyman, the head of production at Warner Bros., during their first meeting. The studio wanted Parks, by then an accomplished writer, documentarian, poet and composer as well as a famous photographer, to adapt his 1963 novel, “The Learning Tree,” for the screen. In addition to directing, he would write the screenplay and the musical score, and serve as producer. […]