14 Facts About Will Counts

Will Counts was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for these photographs.

Will Counts was born in Little Rock on August 24,1931.

Later, the family returned to Little Rock where Will Counts attended Little Rock High School.

Fifteen years later, Will Counts earned his doctorate in education at IU.

Will Counts was 26 when some of his most iconic images were published on September 4,1957.

Still a photographer for the Democrat, Will Counts captured white demonstrators and the National Guard gathering outside Central High.

That photo, and four others that Will Counts shot on that day, were published on the front page of the Democrat.

Only a few weeks after the famous photograph of Elizabeth Eckford was taken, Will Counts photographed black journalist Alex Wilson, a reporter for the Memphis-based Tri-State Defender, being kicked in the face by a brick-wielding white man while a crowd watched.

Will Counts wrote in a story accompanying the photo that Wilson wanted to retain his dignity, and refused to fight back.

Will Counts's picture made the front page of newspapers across the nation; it moved President Dwight Eisenhower, the next day, to federalize the Arkansas National Guard and send 1,000 members of the Army's 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock to ensure the school would be desegregated.

In 1999, Will Counts published A Life is More Than a Moment.

The Associated Press and the Arkansas Democrat entered Will Counts's images captured at Central High School for the 1957 Pulitzer Prize in news photography, and the Pulitzer Prize photography jury unanimously chose him as one of the nominees.

Will Counts won a first place award by the National Press Photographer's Association and first place in the spot news category for the fifteenth annual "News Picture of the Year Competition" for his photo of Alex Wilson.

Will Counts developed some of the most renowned photojournalism departments in the United States and, in 1996, he was inducted in the Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame.