Ira Wilmer “Will” Counts Jr. (August 24, 1931 – October 6, 2001) was an American photojournalist and educator best known for his powerful images documenting the 1957 desegregation crisis at Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas.
Early Life and Education
Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, to Ira Counts Sr. and Jeanne Frances Adams Counts, he grew up in a family of tenant farmers/sharecroppers during the Great Depression. The family worked near Rose Bud (White County) and outside Cabot (Lonoke County) before moving in 1936 to the Resettlement Administration’s Plum Bayou Homestead in Jefferson County; they later returned to Little Rock. He had one brother. Counts attended Little Rock High School (later Central High School), where journalism teacher Edna Middlebrook sparked his interest in photography. In his junior year, he wanted a Speed Graphic camera (inspired by an ad in Boys’ Life), but his mother could afford only a Kodak Brownie Hawkeye while his father served overseas in World War II.
He enrolled at Arkansas State Teachers College (now the University of Central Arkansas) in 1949, working as the school photographer and freelancing for the Arkansas Gazette and Arkansas Democrat to help pay tuition. He earned a BA in education in 1952. He completed a master’s degree in education and audiovisual communications at Indiana University (IU) in Bloomington in 1954, then worked briefly as a photographer at the Arkansas Democrat and as production supervisor at IU’s audiovisual center. He later earned a doctorate in education from IU in 1967.
Photojournalism Career and the Little Rock Crisis
In June 1957, Counts rejoined the Arkansas Democrat as a staff photographer and editor of its Sunday magazine. At age 26, he covered the tense desegregation of Central High School after the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education ruling. Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus had deployed the National Guard to block the entry of the nine Black students known as the Little Rock Nine.
On September 4, 1957, Counts captured some of his most iconic images, including the famous photograph of 15-year-old Elizabeth Eckford (one of the Little Rock Nine) walking stoically past a jeering white mob after being denied entry. The image prominently features Hazel Bryan (later Massery) shouting at Eckford; it became widely known as “The Scream.” Counts later explained that he wore a red plaid shirt to blend in and avoid looking like an “Eastern Establishment” journalist, and that his 35mm Nikon S2 with a wide-angle lens gave him a technical edge over photographers using bulkier Speed Graphic cameras that required reloading after each shot. He drew inspiration from Henri Cartier-Bresson’s approach of shooting many exposures to capture decisive moments.
Weeks later, he photographed Black journalist Alex Wilson (of the Memphis Tri-State Defender) being kicked and assaulted by a white man while Wilson clung to his hat for dignity. The photo of Wilson and the Eckford images circulated nationally, helping draw widespread attention to the crisis. Counts’s work was unanimously recommended by the Pulitzer Prize photography jury but was not selected by the board (which had already awarded multiple prizes related to Little Rock coverage). His Wilson photograph took first place in the National Press Photographers Association’s News Picture of the Year competition and was named one of the world’s 50 most memorable news pictures of the preceding half-century by Encyclopædia Britannica. Some accounts credit these images with influencing President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s decision to send federal troops (including the 101st Airborne) to enforce desegregation. Counts later worked for the Associated Press in Chicago and Indianapolis.
Academic Career and Later Work
In 1963, he joined the faculty of Indiana University’s journalism school (initially as a lecturer, later as a professor), where he taught photojournalism for 32 years until retiring in 1995. He helped build one of the nation’s leading photojournalism programs during a period of significant growth in the department, became Encyclopædia Britannica’s expert on photojournalism, and innovated teaching methods (including photographing students with name cards so he could memorize and greet them by name). Several of his students went on to win Pulitzer Prizes. He was inducted into the Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame in 1996.
In 1997, Counts and his wife Vivian helped arrange a reconciliation meeting between Elizabeth Eckford and Hazel Bryan Massery. He returned to photograph Central High for the 40th anniversary of the events. In 1999, he published A Life Is More Than a Moment: The Desegregation of Little Rock’s Central High, which combined his photographs with text reflecting on the crisis and its aftermath. Other books include A Photographic Legacy (1979), The Magnificent 92: Indiana’s Courthouses (1991), Monroe County in Focus (1993), and co-authored work on Bloomington.
Personal Life and Death
Counts was married to Vivian Counts; they had children (including son Wyatt, a photographer, and daughter Claudia) and stepchildren. He died of cancer on October 6, 2001, in Bloomington, Indiana, at age 70. More than 100 former students attended his funeral. His photographic collection was later donated to the Indiana University Archives. He received posthumous recognition, including an honorary Doctor of Communication degree from the University of Central Arkansas.
Counts’s images remain among the most enduring visual records of the Civil Rights Movement’s struggle over school desegregation, illustrating both the hostility faced by the Little Rock Nine and the power of photojournalism to shape public awareness and policy.