The following is a column by Governor Kathleen Sebelius, released with the one-year anniversary of Gordon Parks’ death to honor his legacy:

Gordon Parks

A couple years ago, I had the great opportunity to visit Fort Scott to pay tribute to Gordon Parks. We were gathered in the Liberty Theater.  Gordon had gone there as a boy, but segregation forced him to sit up in the balcony. That autumn evening, Gordon came back to his hometown for the first time in 20 years.

It truly was a homecoming decades in the making.  Growing up, segregation and discrimination had left a bitter taste in his mouth. But just as Gordon Parks had grown up in those intervening years, so had Kansas. We had once again found the torch of freedom that led so many of our ancestors to lay down their lives to keep Kansas a free state.

We had rediscovered its light of justice and tolerance that shone upon Kansas at her founding. And we had carried that torch forward as we sought to give every person the opportunity to reach his or her God-given potential.

Without question, Gordon Parks helped light that torch – and he came home to be recognized for a lifetime of achievement and service. And he also came home to finally – finally – sit in the front row.

Gordon said he felt a lot of love that night, but that love that people showed to him was easily exceeded by the love he showed for the men and women he lifted up over the course of an amazing life.

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. A remembrance last year said, “he used his cameras like six-shooters” – an apt analogy.

Gordon used his cameras to pierce through the heartache of a nation divided by race to find hope – hope that the next generation would find a way to live together in brotherhood. His lenses shot through poverty to find pride – the pride of men and women who didn’t let their wallets define their worth.

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.

Gordon the man has left us now.  But his spirit, and his work, live on with us in our awakened conscience and in the multitude of broken barriers he left in his wake. We can see him when a child has a chance to go to a good school, regardless of the color of her skin. We can see him when a man is free to go as far as his dreams will carry him, regardless of humble beginnings. And, of course, we can see him in his photographs.

Yes, Gordon Parks is no longer with us in person, but he is with us in our hearts. And…when we are all gathered before God on that final day of judgment, when those who were their brothers’ keepers are rewarded for their deeds, Gordon will be there as well.

And he’ll be sitting in the front row.

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