The history of segregation in Alabama in pictures by Gordon Parks

Gordon Parks is the first African-American author and photographer of LIFE magazine, the first African-American to publish in Vogue, and the first African-American to direct a popular Hollywood film. In 1956, while still working at LIFE magazine, Gordon visited Alabama, where he took pictures for one of the most important and influential photo projects in his entire career — Segregation Story.

Parks took more than 50 photos for the project, but only 20 of them were eventually published in LIFE magazine. It was believed that the rest of the films were lost, but in 2011, 5 years after Gordon's death, they were accidentally discovered.

The photo shows a sign with the inscription Colored entrance ("Entrance for colored"). The policy of segregation assumed the separation of the white population of the United States from other ethnic groups: the delimitation of landing zones in public transport, separate schooling, and so on, to the point that blacks were forbidden to swim to the part of the lake intended for bathing whites.

However, thanks to the activities of Martin Luther King and other activists, public opinion has been changed.

On July 2, 1964, U.S. President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act outlawing segregation.