“Gordon Parks: Segregation Story in Mobile, 1956” is now on view at the Mobile Museum of Art until September 6. This exhibition of iconic photographs by Gordon Parks documents the everyday activities and rituals of one extended Black family, the Thorntons, in Mobile and Shady Grove, Alabama, during the Jim Crow era. The images were originally published in a 1956 photo essay by Parks—an assignment from Life magazine after the Montgomery bus boycotts—and have come to be known around the world for helping to inspire the Civil Rights movement.

In an essay accompanying the portfolio of photographs, American cultural historian and art critic Maurice Berger says, “These quiet, compelling photographs elicit a reaction that Parks believed was critical to undoing racial prejudice: empathy. Throughout his career, he endeavored to help viewers, white and black, understand and share the feelings of others. It was with this goal in mind that he set out to document the lives of the Thornton family, creating images meant to alter the way Americans viewed one another and, ultimately, themselves.”

In an adjacent gallery, a timeline of Mobile Civil Rights events and African American history spanning 1900 to 2020, compiled by Commissioner Merceria Ludgood and historians Sheila Flanagan and Scotty Kirkland, are also on view. Ludgood says of the project, “The Gordon Parks exhibit and civil rights timeline provide an opportunity for us to commemorate the struggles and sacrifices made by Mobile’s civil rights giants, to reflect on the work that remains to be done and our obligation to build on their legacy.”