Death Proves an Indifferent Tragedy

In 1948, after a brief stint at Vogue, Gordon Parks landed a staff job at Life magazine. His first assignment, a photo-story about gang warfare in Harlem, established his reputation as a world-class photojournalist. Here is Part IV of a five-part excerpt from his autobiography, “Voices in the Mirror.”

Most blacks were weighted with the denial of opportunity, but I had been fortunate to be able to shove aside those restrictive boundaries. Now what I wanted was what so many photographers, black and white, found almost impossible to get: a staff job at Life magazine. That publication wasn’t exactly trumpeting the black man’s cause, but it would be a prestigious base for me to work from since it was so well known and reached millions of readers throughout the world. So one morning I took my portfolio to Wilson Hicks, the magazine’s picture editor, and asked for a job. Miraculously, he decided to give me a try.

Hicks later explained his decision to me: “There was a scarcity of documentary photographers on the staff, and none with fashion experience, and we sorely needed someone to cover the Paris collections. It was that simple.”

But even later I learned it wasn’t that simple. Hicks had to be cajoled into my acceptance by two senior editors, John Dille and Sally Kirkland, who ran the fashion department. I could serve both their needs. Dille wanted a powerful documentary story for an upcoming issue, and she was frantically preparing for the French collections.

Eyeing me with skepticism, Hicks had thrown out a question that caught me off guard. “Have you something in mind that you’d like to do?”

“Yes, I do,” I lied, never expecting things would get so far so quickly. “A gang war is taking place up in Harlem, and I’d like to cover it.” Then hurriedly I concocted a deeper reason. “Such a story might help black kids realize the folly in murdering one another.”

Hicks wasn’t impressed. It would be easier to freeze snowballs in hell, he replied dryly. But after a terribly long moment he caved in. “OK, I’ll go along with that idea, but I can only offer you $500.”

“So little?” I was astounded.

Dille cut in quickly. “Take it--just take it. Everything will work out.” Reluctantly I agreed to the price. It was an opening.

Once outside Hicks’ office, Dille assured me that I would work with an unlimited expense account. This made very good sense. It had been a tense session, but both Sally and John were contented, and I was secretly ecstatic--yet apprehensive as well. It was indeed a tough assignment, and I was now struck with the impossibility of pulling it off.

The next morning I drove up to Harlem in search of a gang leader. It was like searching for a bubble in the sea. For a week I drove around up there, with Hicks’ doubts overlapping my own. Why would any sensible gang leader, having just blown away somebody, want his face spread over the pages of Life magazine? And why should he take me, a stranger, into his confidence? Doggedly, I kept on with the search.

I was at the 125th Street police precinct one morning talking with a detective friend, Jimmie Morrow, when luck arrived in the person of a 16-year-old, freckled-faced boy with a prizefighter’s build and demeanor. The obscenities he was hurling at the desk sergeant were strong enough to get his head cracked, but the sergeant sat quietly, red-faced.

Amazed, I turned and looked at Jimmie questioningly. He smiled. “That’s your man if you can talk him into it.”

Red Jackson was the Harlem gang leader. Now the crown prince of the Midtowners, he was cursing out the desk sergeant for failing to give his gang the protection it had been promised--not from the police, but from a rival gang that had killed a Midtowner the day before.

The police, recognizing him as the most powerful leader in the slaughter that was taking place, had asked him to pull back and help cool things off. Now, having lost one of his gang, he was giving vent to his anger.

In the weeks to follow, I found how indifferent death could be in this warring place, where honor meant spilling blood over the most trivial thing--an accidental bump on the shoulder, a dispute over a stolen bicycle, an invasion of the wrong territory, a girl’s innocent wink or a game of stickball.

Teen-agers, talking death, took blood oaths to die together. Mothers feared a knock at the door, afraid it was the police to say that a son was dead. All the Midtowners had knife or bullet wounds, and they wore them with bravura. They were like badges of courage. Such passionate allegiance, Red explained, had good reason.

“It’s for protection. You wise up fast here in Harlem. You join up with somebody or keep getting your a. . . kicked. They say, ‘You belong to a gang, cat?’ ‘No.’ ‘You got some loot?’ ‘No. I ain’t got none.’ Then--Bop! Bop! Bop! ‘Next time you better have some!’ If you’ve got some the next time, they take it and you get bopped anyway. If you’re a Midtowner, they think twice before starting any (trouble) ‘cause they know they’ll have to rumble.”

The Midtowners were about to settle matters with the Harlem Dukes. One had called Red’s sister a bitch and had spit on her shoe. She didn’t know his name; no matter, that was reason enough for a rumble. The point of encounter was on Eighth Avenue near 135th Street, less than two blocks from the 135th police precinct.

We left the car at 125th Street, met 12 other Midtowners and started walking. Red, wearing dark glasses and an old trench coat I had given him, looked every bit the leader. The others, packing revolvers, zip guns and chains, moved along stealthily. Red had given orders two hours before, and they were ready. A police car passed, slowed, then went on.

I was carrying a small camera the Life technicians had rigged up. The infrared flash, they told me, would hardly be discernible--just a small flicker of light in the darkness. My feelings were split. Those of the reporter pulsed for action. Yet, in human terms, I worried about the possible consequences.

Swiftly and silently, the Midtowners walked into rival territory. Then Red’s hand shot up, signaling us to stop. He gave a quick nod of his head, and three of the most powerful of them slammed their weight against a basement door. My nerves were scrambling as we broke into the Dukes’ den, taking them by surprise.

Tiger Johnson, the rival leader, leaped to his feet, but before he could grab a lead pipe, Red knocked him to the floor with a brutal right. The Midtowners aimed their weapons, and seven of the Dukes stood motionless as Red put a switchblade to Tiger’s throat. “Which one of you bastards spit on my sister?”

Tiger’s eyes snapped toward a boy crouching beside him, “I’m sorry, man,” the boy mumbled.

“Get to your feet, punk!” Red ordered. The boy rose slowly with fear in his eyes, and fear was bolting through me as well. “Open your shirt, punk!” The boy opened the buttons at his chest. When Red placed the point of the blade just above his heart I snapped the shutter and froze. “Say it again, punk, and make it loud.”

“I’m sorry, man!” Sweat was rolling down his face and chest. Red flicked the blade upward for about a quarter of an inch. The boy moaned as a thin trickle of blood came, and I felt like turning away. “You’re lucky I don’t cut out your (expletive) heart and make you eat it!” Inwardly I sighed a sigh of relief. He spat on the boy’s chest and dropped him with a terrible right.

“Frisk these other punks!” That was done quickly with expertise, then we backed out of the place--with the Midtowners’ arsenal swelled by four pistols, five knives and six zip guns. Then we were out of the block as swiftly and silently as we had come.

Three weeks later, Joey, a Midtowners’ war lord, was knifed to death by the Sabers, another gang. On the third day, Red and Herbie, his chief war counselor, went to the funeral home where Joey’s body lay. “You had better travel light,” Red had warned me. “We may have to do some running.” I went as lightly burdened as possible, wearing a pair of sneakers. Only Red and Herbie went in to see the body. The others waited outside to stand guard in case the Sabers showed up.

A few minutes later, we were running from an attempted Saber ambush, and people were hurrying for shelter as we fled to an empty second-story hide-out to escape the Sabers.

Once there, Red knocked out a window, reached for his .38 and prepared to start firing. From a dark corner, I photographed him. It was that photograph that made him known throughout the world. Further violence was avoided when two police cars from the 135th Street precinct careened into the block.

Twelve days later, a Saber was killed, but a Midtowner’s stomach was badly slashed during that rumble. Since the police would be searching the hospitals, two of the Midtowners stitched the gaping wound together with needle and thread.

I had seen enough bloodshed to last me a lifetime, and I believed I had the story I had come for. Two weeks later, the Red Jackson story was on the stands.

There had been some contention between the editors and myself during the layout of the story. They had wanted to show Red on the cover with a smoking gun in his hand. I fought against it, even destroyed the negative to be sure it wasn’t used for such a purpose.

I had tried to lay the horror of gang war before the nation, hoping that somehow a way could be found to end it. Perhaps someone paid attention; the following year passed with just a few Harlem gang murders. For the time being, it seemed that youth’s killing of youth was slowly coming to a halt.

Now, 40 years later, hard drugs had become the rainbow, and again youthful gangs roam city streets killing one another--protecting their little kingdoms of heroin and crack. Gunfire erupts nightly, and unfortunately black teen-agers are caught dead-center of the catastrophe.

Despair settles in and they try burning it out with alcohol and hard drugs. In a short time they fade into mere shadows of themselves, into nothingness, then early death. Spun from the loom of such disaster is a remarkably cold statistic. The average black male in Harlem is fortunate to live past the age of 40. Pausing now to look back, I see myself in the distance--leaving there with a sigh of thankfulness.

Red Jackson’s fate was less final than it had seemed when I found him leading the Midtowners in Harlem back in 1948. After almost 40 years, a letter came assuring me that, for him, time had beneficently wielded its power. With learned humility he wrote:

“Dear Gordon: I saw my picture in Life again the other day, and it brought back some bad memories. That story was a big ego trip for me. At 56, I’ve been through the mill, and along the way I’ve met dozens of ghetto kids who wound up the same way I did. Now, with your help, I would like to reach some of them and tell them how quickly glory faded from me, and that there’s a much better way to go. I might wind up saving some of them. Even one would be worth it.

“I would like to help a few Harlem kids to get an education. That’s the key: Education! Would you believe that at my age I’m preparing to take the test for my High School Equivalency Diploma? I love it! And I’d love to hear from you again. Yours truly, Red Jackson.”

A door from Red’s sordid past has finally opened up, and he had chosen to walk through it to a better kind of life. Time had deceived both of us. Now I could firmly believe he would make it--something that I had for so long doubted. The letter had been dated Jan. 5, 1987. He had taken a long step from his old unhappiness.