Already hailed as an African-American pioneer for being the first black photographer on the staff of Life magazine, Gordon Parks channeled his tragic childhood into his semi-autobiographical novel, The Learning Tree, published in 1963. Five years later, Parks was still reeling from the April 1968 assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. when he received a telephone call from actor turned filmmaker John Cassavetes. "Gordon, just finished reading your novel... It's got to be made into a motion picture and you have to direct it!" Serving as a conduit to Warner Brothers head of production Kenneth Hyman, Cassavetes made it possible for Parks to become Hollywood's first black film director. Taking on the task of directing The Learning Tree (1969) from his own script, while also serving as producer and composing the score, Parks coaxed Bonnie and Clyde cinematographer Burnett Guffey out of retirement for the project and cast juvenile actor Kyle Johnson (son of Star Trek star Nichelle Nichols) in the pivotal role of his childhood surrogate, Newt Winter. The film's depiction of race relations in the interregnum between world wars spoke to Vietnam era moviegoers, making the film a hit for Warner Brothers and paving the way for Parks to helm Shaft (1971), which inaugurated the "Blaxploitation" film movement. In 1989, The Learning Tree was one twenty films inducted by the Library of Congress into the National Film Registry for its cultural, historical, and aesthetic significance.

By Richard Harland Smith