segregation

In the spring of 1950, Gordon Parks, the first African-American photographer for Life Magazine, returned to his hometown of Fort Scott, Kansas. On assignment for the magazine, Parks photographed his middle school classmates, who were dispersed among Fort Scott and other Midwestern cities and towns. The resulting images – while quite personal to Parks – offer a glimpse into a community and a set of experiences shared by many African Americans of his generation. Depicting the realities of discrimination without the veil of nostalgia, it’s a body of work that captures the resiliency of a community at a significant point in American history – just prior to the Civil Rights Movement. But for reasons unknown, Life never published the series. Now, the powerful exhibit of over 40 segregation-er...

Economic disparities in earnings, health and wealth between Black and white Americans are staggeringly large. Historical government practices and institutions – such as segregated schools, redlined neighborhoods and discrimination in medical care – have contributed to these wide disparities. While these causes may not always be overt, they can have lasting negative effects on the prosperity of minority communities. Abhay Aneja and I are researchers at University of California, Berkeley, who specialize in examining the causes of social inequality. Our new research examines the U.S. federal government’s role in creating conditions of racial inequality more than a century ago. Specifically, we researched the harmful impact of government discrimination against Black civil service employees. W...