Poet, novelist, composer, photojournalist: Parks has found success in several creative arenas. However, particularly notable is his position as the first African American ever to be signed as a director to a major Hollywood film studio. His directorial debut, The Learning Tree, filmed in 1968, was based on his own childhood in Fort Scott, Kansas, where Parks was raised in abject poverty. Typical of the multi-talented Parks, not only did he write the autobiographical novel upon which the film was based, but he also penned the screenplay adaptation, composed the soundtrack, and directed and produced the film.
Born in Fort Scott in 1912, Parks was the youngest of fifteen children born to sharecropper Andrew Jackson and his wife, Sarah. After the death of his mother in 1928, Parks was sent by his father to live with one of his older, married sisters. The stock market crashed a year later, signaling the start of the Great Depression, and Parks soon found himself out of high school and on the streets of St. Paul, Minnesota, evicted from his sister's home by his brother-in-law and forced to live by his wits. Odd jobs like waiting tables, playing basketball, mopping floors, and playing piano kept the young man from starvation, but it was a stint with the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) in 1933 that allowed Parks to get his feet squarely under him.
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