
Gordon Parks returned to his hometown, Fort Scott, Kansas, in 1950 as a photojournalist on assignment for Life magazine to photograph his classmates from grade school as a way of measuring the impact of school segregation on black Americans. The photo essay he created was never published by LIFE.
See the whole series:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/behold/2015/01/18/the_museum_of_fine_arts_boston_presents_photos_by_gordon_parks_of_black.html