Unable to get along with his brother-in- law, he was put out on his own and forced to fend for himself. Having a strong determination to survive and succeed, he dropped out of high school and worked at various jobs, including playing piano in a brothel, playing semipro basketball, serving as a hotel busboy, and touring with the otherwise all-white Larry Duncan band. He got stranded in New York while with the Duncan band and, at twenty-one, joined the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) in 1933. He married Sally Alvis while in the CCC and returned to Minneapolis in 1934. They had three children, Gordon, Jr., Toni, and David. While working as a railroad porter and bar car waiter, he became interested in photography and bought his first camera. He taught himself camera techniques by shooting pictures in the poor black community. After his photographic skill improved and his work became known, he moved to Chicago, where the opportunities for earning a living at photography were greater. He continued to record the life of the ordinary black people, and a series of ghetto photographs won him a Julius Rosenwald fellowship in 1941. In 1942 he moved to Washington, D.C., to work under Roy Stryker at the Farm Security Administration.
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