Will Counts

Will Counts was born in Little Rock on August 24, 1931. During the Depression he, his brother, and his parents (Ira Counts Sr. and Jeanne Frances Adams Counts) were sharecroppers in White County, outside the town of Rose Bud and in Lonoke County, outside of Cabot, before they relocated in 1936 to the Plum Bayou Homesteads, a New Deal project, in Jefferson County. Later, the family returned to Little Rock where Counts attended Little Rock High School (now Central High). It was there that his journalism teacher, Edna Middlebrook, spurred his interest in photography. During his junior year, Counts asked his mother for a Speed Graphic camera for Christmas after he had seen one advertised in ''Boys' Life'' magazine. However, with his father still away fighting in World War II, his mother could only afford to buy a Kodak Brownie Hawkeye. ==Education==

By the time Counts started at Arkansas State Teachers College (now the University of Central Arkansas) in 1949, he knew he wanted to be a news journalist. He eventually became a photographer for the college. Around the same time, he was freelancing for the Arkansas Gazette and the Arkansas Democrat. In 1952, he received a BA in education. In 1954, he received his master's degree in education and audio-visual communications at Indiana University (IU). Fifteen years later, Counts earned his doctorate in education at IU. ==Career==

yelling at Elizabeth Eckford While pursuing his master's degree in Bloomington, Indiana, he was production supervisor at the IU audiovisual center. Only a few weeks after the famous photograph of Elizabeth Eckford was taken, 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. Hired in 1963, Counts taught photojournalism at Indiana University for 32 years. During this time, a period of explosive growth in Indiana's journalism department, Counts earned his doctorate and became Encyclopædia Britannica's expert on photojournalism. In 1999, Counts published A Life is More Than a Moment. The title came from a line spoken to him by Hazel Massery, the same girl who is seen snarling and shouting at Elizabeth Eckford in his iconic 1957 photograph. Massery stated that she "deeply regretted the photograph for she had become the poster child of the hate generation." She apologized to Eckford years later and for a short time the two became friends. Counts died of cancer in Bloomington, Indiana in 2001. ==Accomplishments==

The Associated Press and the Arkansas Democrat entered 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. But the Pulitzer board did not choose him as the winner, because three Pulitzers had already been awarded for Little Rock coverage. 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. The image was also selected by the Encyclopædia Britannica as one of the world's fifty most memorable news photos in the last fifty years. The photograph was said to have led President Dwight D. Eisenhower to send federal troops to Little Rock, Arkansas to protect African Americans during the integration effort. Counts went on to work for the Associated Press. He 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. ==Personal life==

Counts and his wife, Vivian, lived in Bloomington. They had four children. ==Publications==

• Will Counts, A Photographic Legacy, Ira Will Counts Jr., 1979 • Will Counts, The Magnificent 92: Indiana's Courthouses, Quarry Books (1991) • Will Counts, Monroe County in Focus (1993) • Will Counts, A Life is More than a Moment, Will Campbell, Ernest Dumas, Robert S. McCord, Indiana University Press (1996) • Will Counts, Bloomington: Past and Present, Indiana University Press (2002) • Will Counts and Jon Dilts. The Magnificent 92: Indiana Courthouses ==References==