A CHOICE OF WEAPONS

New York: Harper & Row, 1966. First Edition. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. Parks (1912-2006), the groundbreaking photographer, writer, composer, activist, and filmmaker, was 16 in 1928 when he moved from Kansas to St. Paul, Minnesota, after his mother's death. There, homeless and hungry, he began his fight to survive. This autobiography tells how Parks managed to escape the poverty and bigotry around him and to launch his distinguished career by choosing the weapons given him by "a mother who placed love, dignity, and hard work over hatred." Parks would become the first African American to work at Life magazine and the first to write, direct, and score a Hollywood film. Reflecting on his life, he told an interviewer in 1999, "I saw that the camera could be a weapon against poverty, against racism, against all sorts of social wrongs. I knew at that point I had to have a camera." Octavo: 274 p. Original orange cloth binding, with black titles. Small piece of tape to the front flyleaf. The dust jacket is a trifle edgeworn, with some light sun fading along the spine; otherwise very good.