Obituary

Will Counts

Photographer who captured an enduring image of America's civil rights struggle in his home town

It was the fate of the photographer Will Counts, who has died aged 70 of cancer, to be principally known for a single image. He took it on September 4 1957, outside the central high school at Little Rock, Arkansas. It showed a black schoolgirl named Elizabeth Eckford, impeccably dressed in a white frock and carrying her school files, walking away from Hazel Bryan, a shouting, hate-filled, young white woman standing among other white students.

The incident had been triggered by the US federal government's order that schools must desegregate following the supreme court ruling of 1954 that segregated education - previously accepted as "separate but equal" - was unconstitutional. In 1957, Little Rock central high became the first desegregation test case when the Arkansas governor, Orval Faubus, sent in the national guard to block the admission of nine black students and "maintain order".

Counts, then 26, had just turned professional and was working for the Arkansas Democrat newspaper. As a local, he avoided the fate of three Life magazine journalists, who were assaulted by the mob and arrested. His images achieved what every photojournalist most desires: a major political impact.

On September 23, the nine students were admitted to the school for just three hours. Amid the accompanying furore, Counts took another picture that was to go round the world. This was of a black journalist, Alex Wilson, being kicked in the face by a brick-wielding white. The following day, President Dwight Eisenhower, saying how moved he was by pictures of the "disgraceful occurrences", took control of the local national guard, and ordered federal troops - including units of the 101st Airborne Division - into Little Rock. On September 25, the nine attended their first class.

For Counts, the story held a particular fascination. The son of a tenant farmer, he was educated at what became Little Rock central high school, and it was there that he became interested in photography. He went on to Arkansas Teachers' Training College in 1949, and took a master's degree in education at Indiana University, before returning to Little Rock. He then trained in journalism, and had only been out of school for three months when he became a photographer for the Democrat's Sunday magazine. That was how he found himself running the gauntlet of former classmates and present-day neighbours in accompanying the "Little Rock 9".

Many years later Counts told a CBS interviewer he had pursued the image of the two girls by running backwards, just ahead of Eckford, after she had been turned back by the national guard. He was snapping furiously while, as he put it, "the crowd were right in her ear, yelling their hate. [Eckford] never lost her composure, she just remained so dignified, so determined in what she was doing."

However young, Counts immediately recognised a cover story in the making. "From the time Elizabeth first approached the national guard," he recalled, "you knew this was a major confrontation between the governor and the federal government. She became a symbol for the Little Rock crisis." His pictures were nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, and his single image won a runner-up award. Apparently, the Pulitzer jury was already committed to recognise three other Little Rock images before Counts's came through, and felt it could not add still more to the number.

In 1960, he joined Associated Press in Chicago, and, three years later, took charge of the photography programme at Indiana University, where he developed a prestigious course in photojournalism. He retired in 1995.

In 1997, on the 40th anniversary of the desegregation clash, Counts revisited the Little Rock school, where President Bill Clinton - himself a former Arkansas governor - presented the Congressional gold medal to the Little Rock 9. Elizabeth Eckford was among the recipients, and it was Counts's idea that she be photographed alongside Hazel Bryan Massery, her tormentor from 1957.

Massery was keen, having long since sought to apologise to Eckford for her behaviour. Although the two women had spoken on the telephone, they had never met, and Massery wanted to end her public identification as, she said, "the poster child for the hate generation, trapped in the image captured in that photograph.... I know my life was more than a moment." More Than A Moment became the title of Counts's photographic history, published in 1999, of the desegregation of Little Rock central high school, and posters of the two women meeting were issued under the title, The Reconciliation.

Counts is survived by his wife Vivian, his son and daughter, and a stepson and stepdaughter.

· Ira Wilmer 'Will' Counts Jr, photographer, born August 24 1931; died October 6 2001

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