Awards
- In 1941, Parks was awarded a fellowship for photography from the Rosenwald Fund. The fellowship allowed him to work with the Farm Security Administration.
- In 1961, Parks was named "Magazine Photographer of the Year" by the American Society of Magazine Photos.
- In 1972, the NAACP awarded Parks the Spingarn Medal.
- In 1984, Parks received an honorary Doctor of Humanities degree from Thiel College, a private, liberal arts college in Greenville, Pennsylvania
- In 1989, the United States Library of Congress deemed The Learning Tree "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" due to its being the first major studio feature film directed by an African American and the film was preserved in the United States National Film Registry
- In 2000, Parks was awarded The Congress Of Racial Equality Lifetime Achievement Award.
- In 2000, the Library of Congress deemed Shaft to be "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant", selecting it for NFR preservation as well
- In 2003 he was awarded The Royal Photographic Society's Special 150th Anniversary Medal and Honorary Fellowship (HonFRPS) in recognition of a sustained, significant contribution to the art of photography.
- In 1995, Parks announced that he would donate his papers and entire artistic collection to the Library of Congress and one year later, "The Gordon Parks Collection" was curated
- In 1997, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. mounted a career retrospective on Parks, Half Past Autumn: The Art of Gordon Parks
- In 1999, Gordon Parks Elementary School, a nonprofit, K-5 grade public charter school in Kansas City, Missouri, was established to educate the urban-core inhabitants
- In 2004, The Art Institute of Boston conferred the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters upon Parks
- In 2008, an alternative learning center in Saint Paul, Minnesota renamed their school Gordon Parks High School after receiving a new building
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