A who’s who of Black art and activism packed Cipriani in New York City to celebrate the work and legacy of iconic photographer Gordon Parks on Tuesday night.
Capped off with remarks from iconic activist, Angela Davis, the annual Gordon Parks Foundation Awards Dinner featured a mix of celebration and contemplation, with thoughtful words from presenters including Mara Brock Akil, Nikole Hannah Jones, a video message from forever First Lady Michelle Obama introducing artist Amy Sherald who painted her for the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, and host Swizz Beatz.
Guests— ranging from Spike Lee to Busta Rhymes– showed their love to the foundation, which “supports year-round educational programming as well as the fellowships, prizes, and scholarships provided by The Gordon Parks Foundation to the next generation of artists, writers, and students whose work follows in Parks’s footsteps.”
Former ESSENCE Magazine cover artist Bisa Butler, whose quilt work graced the May/June 2021 issue, expressed her appreciation as a 2022 fellow.
“[It’s] unbelievable. I wish I could have met him. It feels like a benediction from the elders.” Butler shared with ESSENCE. “When I got the fellowship I was in a rough period where I was like, ‘what’s next.’ I was splitting from the gallery. And you feel insecure when you do that because that’s your main income sources,” she shared. “So I knew that I needed something different. And so for the fellowship to come through right then, it was like ‘it’s going to be okay.’ And it gives me a moment to breathe…It’s been like a dream.”
WATCH: ESSENCE Uncovered- Artist Bisa Butler
The foundation’s live auction drew in bids for a selection of Parks’ work, including the highest bid 1956 photo titled “Outside Looking In,” depicting Black children segregated by a chain link fence from a whites-only playground in Alabama.
Special guests also included Kate Clark Harris, the daughter of Dr. Kenneth B. Clark and Mamie Phipps Clark, the pioneering psychologists of the “doll test,” who Parks also captured through his photography. Parks was keen to highlight the impact of segregation, the Civil Rights Movement, and other expressions of Black life.
After an introduction from Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and 1619 Project creator Nikole Hannah-Jones, abolitionist and scholar Angela Davis, one of the foundation’s 2023 honorees, closed out the evening before an after-party hosted by D-Nice.
“I am very deeply moved by the fact that the Gordon Parks Foundation has chosen to honor me. These phenomenal honorees are artists, art advocates, and they are attempting to transform our world through their art and through their social justice practices,” she began. “But let me say that I am especially honored, because Nikole Hannah-Jones has given me this extraordinary introduction.”
“But I’ve said many times that I cannot in good conscience take credit as an individual for what was accomplished by masses of people for what was collectively accomplished,” Davis continued. “Nothing I have ever done of any significance have I done as an individual. And, as a matter of fact, the world never changes because of the stances of individuals, whether they be presidents or senators or CEOs. Progressive change always happens because ordinary people stand together, imagine, demand and struggle together.”
As the gala transpired just days before the world would remember three years since the police murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, Davis also spoke to ESSENCE about the ongoing struggle for racial justice.
“Progress is never as rapid as we want it to be or as we need it to be. But at the same time, I personally never imagined that I would live long enough to hear people seriously engaging with abolition,” she shared. “So that tells me something– that I’m still here to be a part of this struggle and to remind people of all the work that so many others did who are no longer with us.”
READ: Nikole Hannah-Jones ESSENCE November/December 2021 cover story
Hannah-Jones also spoke to the backlash that has transpired since the 2020 protests and “racial reckoning,” as many right-wingers have launched attacks on her work and other lessons on Black and American history.
“The fact that you have a state like Florida that is trying to limit not only what teachers can teach in K-12, but now actually trying to prescribe what can be taught at the college level, educators losing their jobs, their books being pulled off the shelves– that’s not the sign of a healthy democracy,” Hannah-Jones shared with ESSENCE. “That’s actually the sign of a democracy in peril…I think this speaks to how the fight has to go on,” she urged.
See who else joined these extraordinary women in honoring Gordon Parks!
