They're black and they're proud

Photographer Gordon Parks' "Ethel Shariff in Chicago" depicts the daughter of religious activist Elijah Muhammad in a nun's habit, standing at the fore of rows of black women in the same attire. In Parks' "American Gothic," the late lensman who documented the civil rights movement and Jim Crow segregation in the rural South parodies Grant Wood's iconic painting, capturing a black worker with a mop and broom in both hands standing in front of the American flag.

By Phillip Valys, SouthFlorida.com

December 21, 2012