ART TALK: Dr. John Edwin Mason

Join us for an evening lecture and gallery talk in Gordon Parks: Segregation Story in Mobile, 1956 with Dr. John Edwin Mason, a scholar of Parks’ and his work.

ABOUT DR. MASON

Dr. John Edwin Mason teaches African history and the history of photography in the Corcoran Department of History at the University of Virginia. He has written extensively on early nineteenth-century South Africa history, focusing on the history of photography and the history of slavery, South African popular culture, and the Cape Town New Year’s Carnival. He recently completed a book titled, “Gordon Parks and American Democracy.” His book examines the ways Parks’ LIFE magazine photo essays on social justice as well as the books he published during the civil rights era challenged Americans’ notions of citizenship and made him one of the era’s most significant interpreters of the black experience.

Dr. Mason received his undergraduate degree from the University of Cincinnati and his Ph.D. from Yale University.

About GORDON PARKS: Segregation Story in Mobile, 1956

This exhibition of photographs documents the everyday activities and rituals of one extended black family, the Thorntons, in Mobile and Shady Grove, Alabama, during segregation. The images were originally published in a 1956 photo essay by Parks, an assignment from Life magazine after the Montgomery bus boycotts, but have come to be known around the world for helping to inspire the Civil Rights movement. Read more>>

Dr. Mason will also lecture at the History Museum of Mobile‘s Learning Lunch at noon on August 4.

Sponsored by John C. Williams (District 4)

with support from Joel Daves (District 5), Gina Gregory (District 7), Bess Rich (District 6), Frederick D. Richardson, Jr. (District 1), and C.J. Small (District 3)