Parks laid to rest in Fort Scott

He was remembered as a man who used his talents as a photographer, writer, composer and filmmaker to battle racism and poverty during a life that came full circle from a humble beginning to an exulted end in his hometown.

Born in 1912, he was the youngest of 15 children. Parks lived in what he later recalled as a world of racism and poverty, but also where his parents gave him love and taught him to believe he could do whatever he wanted.

Over the years, his views tempered. Shortly before his March 7 death at his home in New York at age 93, Parks said he considered Kansas his home and wanted to be buried near his parents.

At the service Thursday, speakers, including Gov. Kathleen Sebelius and musician-actor Avery Brooks, talked about Parks and what he did.

“Gordon Parks was a man who knew no barriers to his own talent, and he used that talent to bring down the barriers that walled in so many of his countrymen,” Sebelius told roughly 600 people attending.

“And he used the body of his work to blow away the blinders that kept us from seeing that the plight of the poor is the plight of us all,” she said.

Looking out over the audience of blacks and whites sitting shoulder to shoulder, Brooks began speaking softly and then his voice rose.

“What a magnificent man,” Brooks said. “This man knew how to live. He gave us so much to last many lifetimes.”

He said Parks felt that “to stand and be counted was the only way to live.”

Kurt Baker, who worked with Parks on several of his films including “Shaft,” said, “He was from here and went everywhere … he left such ripples across so many lives. He’s left soul shadows.”

It was the second funeral service for Parks. On Tuesday, there was a service in New York attended by some 2,000 people.

Parks’ great-nephew, Charles Parks, of Lawrence, said the fact the service was at the First Presbyterian Church shows how times have changed.

“He certainly would have felt it was an honor to have his final service in a church he couldn’t have gone into as a child,” Charles Parks said in an interview before the service.

Like many towns in those days, it was a segregated society with separate churches, schools and stores for blacks and whites, said Fort Scott historian Arnold Schofield.