A Harlem family 1967

Gordon Parks documented as part of a 1968 Life magazine photo essay. A searing portrait of poverty in the United States, the Fontenelle photographs provide a view of Harlem through the narrative of a specific family at a particular moment in time.

When “A Harlem Family,” Gordon Parks’s story about race and poverty in America featuring the Fontenelle family of Harlem was published in LIFE in March 1968, the response was overwhelming. Many people, touched and moved by Parks’s images and text about the Fontenelles, wanted to help. The editors of LIFE received letters and donations on behalf of the family from large cities and small towns across the country. Not all of the responses were positive; many echoed much of the debate and turmoil that was boiling in this country in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Source: www.gordonparksfoundation.org