In 1956, nearly a year after the Montgomery bus boycott, LIFE magazine sent the photographer Gordon Parks to the south in order to capture segregation there. For weeks he followed the Causeys, a black family that had experienced relative financial success but nonetheless lived among prejudiced policies and the threat of violence. He photographed them at work, at school, and at play. The High Museum begins its virtual exhibition on Civil Rights-era photography with an image from that project—six children staring at a fair, from the far side of a chain-link fence. This selection shows the development of the movement, from the arrest of Rosa Parks to the Freedom Riots and demonstrations of the late sixties. —C.J.F.