What can be inferred from his choices and his actions must sometimes substitute for what cannot be directly documented.

What the records do show clearly is consistency.

Parker was, throughout his documented career, the same person: methodical, precise, committed to the community he came from, skilled at navigating institutions that had not been designed for him, and unwilling to pretend that navigating those institutions had changed them or made them just.

He did not claim, in any document that has survived, that his own success disproved the existence of the barriers he had overcome.

He knew, better than anyone, exactly what those barriers were, because he had encountered them personally and had overcome them through combinations of exceptional ability, fortunate connection, and persistent effort.