Gordon Parks A Cchoice Of Wweapons

Gordon Parks’ novel forced the public of the 1960s to face their prejudices and debilitating cultural norms through the main character’s acute encounter with the “society of the time.”

A Cchoice of Wweapons was published in 1966, during a time of high racial tensions and toward the end of the civil rights movement. His book was very controversial because it showed how black people’s rights were being abused, which many people were either unaware of or ignorant to. It showed many people the great challenges african americans faced in their society and just how unjust it truly was.

Even the story of gordon parks’ life is one of overcoming great challenges. He was the youngest of 15 children and grew up in Fort Scott, Kansas, a racially segregated

Parks goes to Washington D.C. to work at Life magaazine and is told by his boss to explore the city and get a feel for it. Several of these incidents of prejudice occurs while Parks is exploring Washington D.C. for the first time. His first encounter takes place as he is trying to enter a movie theater, “I went to a theater. ‘What do you want?’ ‘A ticket’ ‘Colored people can’t go in here. You should know that(Parks, 223).’” This simple, commonplace conversation shows how prevalent racism is at the time and how Parks’ unawareness of it Parks was. He then goes to a hot dog stand and was told that he had to take his food away from it rather than stay by the stand and eat. He finally proceeds to a department store to purchase a fur coat. He repeatedly trieys to get them workers to sell him a coat one and eventually leaves. He returns to his office absolutely livid and tries to quit on the first day. His boss however, gets parks to talk about his experiences and convinces him to do work exposing the injustice of this racism. One day when Parks is eating in the cafeteria in the traditionally white section, an old black man comes up to Parks and asks him why he is causing trouble for all the black folks. Parks responds by asking the old man why he continues to eat in the back. The old man basically says he eats in the back because it is tradition and that Parks should do the same. Parks says that he is “very sorry” for the old man having to sit in the back and tells the old man that he “won’t let them make a place for me[him](Parks 228)” referring to the white men not being able to tell him where to sit. This is a bold move by Parks considering the time period he lives in and shows his persistent defiance of