Gordon Parks: Pastor E.F. Ledbetter and the Metropolitan Missionary Baptist Church, 1953

In 1953, Gordon Parks returned to Chicago on an assignment for Life magazine to photograph the Metropolitan Missionary Baptist Church and the Reverend Ernest F. Ledbetter Sr. for a series on American religious life. This would be the first assignment for which he was both writer as well as photographer. Parks approached the Near West Side church with a decisive eye toward composing compelling images that conveyed simultaneously the universal humanity and local specificity of the religious community. 

Life never published his photographs or essay, yet as this book demonstrates, Parks' visual and textual representation of Black religious life powerfully documents the dynamism of a community shaped by the Great Migration and Chicago's industrial landscape. This publication features more than 65 previously unpublished photographs and contact sheets, complemented by Parks' unseen manuscript and ephemeral material from the private collection of the Ledbetter family. A range of scholarly essays provides further insight and contextual analysis in art history, cultural geography, Black religious studies and creative writing.

Editor(s): Peter W. Kunhardt Jr., Melanee C. Harvey.

Author(s): Melanee C. Harvey, Abby R. Eron, Reverend Ernest F. Ledbetter Jr., Reverend Ernest F. Ledbetter III, Kymberly Pinder, J.T. Roane, Kera Street, Darlene R. Taylor.

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Hardcover, Steidl, 2025
304 p, 9.75 × 11.5 in.