Gordon Parks — photographer, filmmaker, composer, and author — was born in Fort Scott in 1912. The Gordon Parks Center at Fort Scott Community College preserves his legacy and includes a small museum, while his childhood home in the Elm Street neighbourhood has been recognised as a historic site. Parks is one of the most significant American artists of the 20th century, and his connection to Fort Scott has made the town a point of pilgrimage for his admirers.
Parks documented America's racial divide with unflinching clarity throughout his career at Life magazine, and his memoir "A Choice of Weapons" opens with his early years in this segregated Kansas town. Fort Scott, where Black residents faced daily discrimination and occasional violence, shaped the sense of injustice that powered his entire career. The Gordon Parks Center at the college has rotating exhibitions and a permanent collection of his photography and other work.