In 1956 Gordon Parks traveled to Alabama for LIFE magazine to report on race in the South. Photographing the day-to-day life of an African-American family, Parks was able to capture the tenderness and tension of a people abiding under a pernicious and unjust system of state-mandated segregation. Sixty years on these photographs still resonate with the emotional truth of the moment.

Segregation Story, photographs by Gordon Parks, introduction by Charylayne Hunter-Gault · Available February 28th from Steidl.