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Scrolling through Jack Thornell’s photographs provides a quick glimpse at American history in the late 20th century.
The longtime Associated Press photographer was a native of Vicksburg, Mississippi. Starting in 1964, he captured indelible images in his home state and across the South during the Civil Rights Movement — images that carried around the world on the wire service.
Thornell photographed politicians, athletes and entertainers; people fighting outside a courthouse and in the boxing ring; the destruction of hurricanes and the construction of the Super Dome.
He was an Army veteran and worked for the Jackson Daily News in Mississippi’s capital city before being hired by AP in New Orleans. From there, he covered the South and was dispatched across the U.S. to chronicle political campaigns.
James Meredith looks at Aubrey James Norvell, background left partially hidden behind foliage, after being shot on a road near Hernando, Miss., June 6, 1966. Credit: AP Photo/Jack Thornell
Thornell was 26 when he photographed an assassination attempt on James Meredith on June 6, 1966, near Hernando, Mississippi. A violent white mob rioted in Oxford in September 1962 when Meredith, under a hard-won court order, became the first Black student to enroll at the University of Mississippi. Nearly four years later, he set out on a “March Against Fear,” intending to walk nearly 200 miles from Memphis, Tennessee, to Jackson, Mississippi.
Meredith was only a few miles into Mississippi when a shotgun-wielding white man named Aubrey James Norvell shot Meredith in the head, back and neck. Thornell captured images of Meredith writhing in pain, and his work was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for photography.
James Meredith winces in pain after a gunman shot him June 6, 1966, near Hernando, Miss. Credit: AP Photo/Jack Thornell
In June 1964, during Thornell’s first months at AP, he photographed the burned-out station wagon of three civil rights workers who had been kidnapped and killed in Neshoba County. Investigators found bodies of the Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman later that summer, buried in an earthen dam a few miles away.
The burned station wagon of three missing civil rights workers, Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney, in a swampy area near Philadelphia, Miss., June 24, 1964. The bodies of the men were found later in an earthen dam. Credit: AP Photo/Jack Thornell
In 1965, Thornell was outside a courthouse in Meridian and photographed Alton Wayne Roberts assaulting a CBS cameraman. Roberts was one of eight men convicted in 1967 on federal charges of conspiracy to violate the civil rights of Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman. Roberts’ 1965 court appearance was shortly after he was indicted in the case.
Thornell retired from AP in 2004. He was 86 when he died from complications from kidney disease Thursday in the New Orleans suburb of Metairie, Louisiana.
Alton Wayne Roberts punches CBS cameraman Laurens Pierce outside the Federal Building in Meridian, Miss., Jan. 27, 1965. Roberts, a 26-year-old salesman, was a defendant in the deaths of three civil rights workers. Credit: AP Photo/Jack ThornellSen. Robert F. Kennedy, D-N.Y., left, talks with a group of people in front of a country store during his tour of the Mississippi Delta, while investigating the federal antipoverty program, near Greenville, Miss., April 11, 1967. Next to Kennedy is Kenneth Dean of the Mississippi Council on Human Relations, who is holding a child suffering from a diet deficiency. Credit: AP Photo/Jack ThornellA policeman holds his revolver at the ready as he and another officer retreat with a looter in custody, during racial unrest in Memphis, Tenn., March 28, 1968. Credit: AP Photo/Jack ThornellThe Rev. Ralph Abernathy, right, and Bishop Julian Smith, left, flank Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., during a civil rights march in Memphis, Tenn., March 28, 1968. Credit: AP Photo/Jack ThornellCoretta Scott King, third right, is accompanied by her children, Yolanda, Bernice, Martin III, and Dexter, at Sisters Chapel on the campus of Spellman College in Atlanta, April 8, 1968. Credit: AP Photo/Jack ThornellMayor Richard J. Daley stands at the microphone as shouts resound through the International Amphitheater in Chicago, demanding the Democratic National Convention adjourn until later in the day before considering the party platform, Aug. 28, 1968. During the convention, hundreds of demonstrators waged war with police and National Guardsmen on the streets of Chicago. Credit: AP Photo/Jack ThornellStudents at Jackson State College peer from a window that was shot out by police on campus May 15, 1970, in Jackson, Miss. Two youths died as police riddled windows of a girl’s dormitory they claimed they were returning sniper fire. Credit: AP Photo/Jack Thornell, FileActress Jane Fonda, center, joins the picket line with marchers in support of a group of black militant squatters whom police have tried to evict form city-owned apartments in New Orleans, Nov. 3, 1970. Credit: AP Photo/Jack ThornellNew Orleans police officers try to keep their heads down as they move in on a Black Panther headquarters during an exchange of gunfire in New Orleans, Sept. 15, 1970. Credit: AP Photo/Jack ThornellNew York Mets general manager Robert Scheffing, right, chats with stadium official Bill Connick under the roof of the dome stadium that is under construction in New Orleans, April 2, 1973. Credit: AP Photo/Jack ThornellA prisoner lights a cigarette in the maximum security section of the Louisiana State prison at Angola, in December 1975. Credit: AP Photo/Jack ThornellPresidential candidate Jimmy Carter waves from the rear of a train to a crowd of supporters in Philadelphia, Pa., Sept. 20, 1976. Carter made the stop during his 14-hour three-state whistle stop campaign. Credit: AP Photo/Jack ThornellAmy Carter catches up on her reading as she waits with her parents, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, for the Democratic presidential candidate to address a rally at the Tabernacle Baptist Church on Chicago’s South Side, Oct. 10, 1976. Credit: AP Photo/Jack ThornellA sharpshooter at Brushy Mountain State Prison in Petros, Tenn., June 11, 1977, takes a nap on the lawn in front of a cellblock after duty in the search for six escaped convicts, including James Earl Ray. Credit: AP Photo/Jack ThornellThe face of Muhammad Ali is covered in perspiration after a workout, Sept. 8, 1978, in New Orleans where he is getting ready for his rematch will Leon Spinks for the title. Credit: AP Photo/Jack ThornellRepublican presidential candidate Ronald Reagan, left, moves through the crowd shaking hands at the Neshoba County Fair in Philadelphia, Mississippi, Aug. 3, 1980. Credit: AP Photo/Jack Thornell, FileSouth African Bishop Desmond Tutu denounces his country’s apartheid policy of racial separation in New Orleans, Sept. 7, 1982. Credit: AP Photo/Jack ThornellNew Orleans Saints quarterback Archie Manning walks out of coach Bum Phillips office, Sept. 17, 1982, in New Orleans after he was traded to the Houston Oilers. Manning, a star at the University of Mississippi, had played his entire 12 years in the NFL with the Saints until this point. Credit: AP Photo/Jack Thornell
