THE LEARNING TREE

US, 1969, 106 minutes, Colour.
Kyle Johnson, Alex Clarke, Estelle Evans, Dana Elcar.
Directed by Gordon Parks.

Gordon Parks is a prominent photographer-journalist in America. His book, The Learning Tree, was his autobiography, the story of a negro boy, growing up in rural America in the early decades of this century. Parks wrote screenplay and music for this film adaptation of his book as well as producing and directing it. The Learning Tree, therefore, is one man's testimony to his American life and background. It is not a bitter testimony, though it has many harsh things to say, and speaks of murder and hatred. This single testimony, which might seem too gentle for many of to-day's African Americans, keenly conscious of rights and injustices, needs to be complemented by the single testimony of a fierce crusader, whose growing up was in a squalid urban background, like James Baldwin in The Fire Next Time or Go Tell It on the Mountain.

Beautifully photographed (perhaps bowing too much to such fashions as slow-motion running through grass and trees) and well acted.

This is a film about 'growing up'. Its elements include:
- A black background of home, friends, school, church.
- rural Kansas poverty.
- the family influence of strong mother and upright father on a youngest child.
- friends, good and bad, with whom one could swim or steal apples and run the risk of violence.
- a southern white sheriff.
- violence, and violent death of a black shot by the sheriff or a white man bashed by a black man.
- sex experience.
- love and betrayal: a black girl seduced by a white ne'er-do-well,
- education and ambition of further education,
- work.
- humiliation in cafes.
- hatred from fellow negroes.
- and the culmination of an awareness that man has a responsibility, a conscience and that he must follow his sense of right and wrong no matter what the consequences.
- in this way, a boy becomes a man, his town has been his learning tree.