Gordon Parks met Muhammad Ali in 1966, a time when Ali was vocal about racism in America and was also a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War. As Parks writes during the beginning of his 1966 photo-essay in Life magazine, “I began to feel sympathy for him. There was a side to this brash, poetry-spouting kid that I admired. I was not proud of him, as I had been proud of Joe Louis. Muhammad was a gifted black champion and I wanted him to be a hero, but he wasn’t making it.” They met and it was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Parks took immortal photos, and Ali listened to Parks, and learned. Here in this exhibition are the photographs from Parks’s two Life essays on Ali, circa 1966 and 1970. —L.J.