BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — Will Counts, whose photograph of a white crowd jeering at a black girl captured the drama of the 1957 Little Rock, Ark., desegregation crisis, died of cancer. He was 70.
Counts, who died Saturday, taught photojournalism at Indiana University for 32 years, retiring in 1995. He had lived in Bloomington since 1960.
Before turning to teaching, Counts worked as a photographer-editor for the Arkansas Democrat in Little Rock, Ark., and for the Associated Press in Chicago and Indianapolis.
He was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for photographs he took during the September 1957 desegregation battle at Little Rock's Central High School. Despite a court order, Arkansas Gov. Orval E. Faubus ordered the National Guard in to prevent black students from entering. Faubus' action prompted President Eisenhower to dispatch federal troops to desegregate the school.