Remembering Little Rock

Frozen in time... 1957

1957 violence
Photo by Will Counts
Counts today
Photo by Mark Wilson
(Top photo) 1957 -- A young Arkansas photographer, Will Counts, was a Pulitzer nominee for the images he caught as tensions mounted at Little Rock (Ark.) Central High. (Bottom photo) 1997-- Counts outside Central High School.
Photos used with permission of Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Forty years ago, a photographer named Counts captured the events at Central High

By Jayne Spencer

When President Dwight Eisenhower saw the pictures of Alex Wilson, editor of the Chicago Daily Defender, (top right photo, this page) being kicked by a school integration protester after refusing to run from a mob gathered near Little Rock (Ark.) Central High School in September 1957, Eisenhower literally called out the troops.

The stage had been set in May 1954 following the U.S. Supreme Court's Brown vs. Board of Education decision. In a stand-off, Eisenhower sent federal troops into the city, where Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus had called out the state's National Guard to block the federal court order mandating desegregation of the school. Nine black students, amidst a mob of protesters, entered the school on Sept. 4 of that year.

The news photographer whose images still best depict those late summer and early fall events 40 years ago is Will Counts, an emeritus professor of journalism at Indiana University Bloomington. He was a nominee for the Pulitzer Prize in 1957.

As Home Pages went to press this week, Counts, who retired from IU in 1995, was scheduled to be on the steps of Central High School with President Bill Clinton and all nine of the black students who enrolled there 40 years ago for a commemoration Thursday (Sept. 25).

In addition to the commemoration on the high school steps, he had interviews with ABC Nightline, ABC Good Morning Sunday, CBS Sunday Morning, CBS Evening News and an appearance at the Society of Professional Journalists, meeting in Little Rock this past week.

Our thanks to our colleagues at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette who are allowing us to print the pictures on the front page.

For more Counts' photographs and a time line of the 39-month path leading to the confrontation in Little Rock, visit this Democrat-Gazette "The Central High Crisis" Web site:

http://www.ardemgaz.com/central/counts.html

Return to Table of Contents