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Remembering Jack Thornell
27 April 2026
Jack Randolph Thornell, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his photo of James Meredith after he was attacked and wounded by a sniper during his June 1966 March Against Fear in Mississippi, has died from complications of kidney disease. He was 86.
Born and raised in Vicksburg, Miss., in 1939, Thornell served in the Army Signal Corps where his name got mixed up with that of a camera bug who wanted to attend photographic school. So the Army sent Thornell to photography school instead of radio repair. He worked as a photographer for the Jackson Daily News (1960–1964) before joining the Associated Press.
He worked for the Associated Press from 1964 to 2004 on a variety of assignments, photographing politicians, natural disasters and crime scenes. But the struggle for racial justice ran through Thornell's wire service career from the beginning. In fact, he covered the integration of a Mississippi Gulf Coast school on his first day of work for the New Orleans bureau.
In June 1966, the 26-year-old Thornell was assigned to cover a civil rights march led by Meredith, who had already made history by integrating the University of Mississippi in 1962. Meredith was mounting a "March Against Fear" through the state to encourage Black residents to register and vote.
As Meredith was walking on U.S. Highway 51 near Hernando, Miss., Thornell and another photographer were sitting in a car parked along the roadside when the sound of shotgun blasts sent them scrambling.
One image captured by Thornell shows a wounded Meredith grimacing in agony as he dragged himself to the edge of the road. Another is Meredith on the ground at the edge of the highway with arms extended and hands on the pavement. His head is turned, apparently looking at his would-be assassin, who can be seen at the extreme left of the picture in a weedy ditch.
Meredith was hospitalized and recovered. Aubrey James Norvell, who was apprehended at the scene, pleaded guilty and served 18 months of a five-year prison sentence.
Until he developed the film and pored over the negatives, Thornell thought he would be fired. He feared the other photographer with him had an image of the gunman while he didn't.
Instead of dismissal, Thornell won the Pulitzer in 1967.
In 1964, Thornell photographed the burned-out station wagon in Neshoba County, Miss., that belonged to civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman, whose bodies were found buried in an earthen dam weeks after Ku Klux Klansmen abducted and killed them.
Thornell would hurriedly snap a photo of the local sheriff being arrested by federal agents on conspiracy charges in connection with their deaths. He got the shot while backing away as a supporter of the sheriff threatened him with a knife.
Thornell chronicled that violence leading up to school integration in Grenada, Miss., in 1966. One of his photos showed a Black man covering his ears as he moved away from a cherry bomb tossed by angry white people.
Thornell photographed the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. several times, including during the Selma-to-Montgomery march in Alabama in 1965, and at demonstrations in support of striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tenn., in 1968, the week before King was assassinated there.
Thornell had returned home to New Orleans before King was assassinated, but later was dispatched to Atlanta, where he photographed the King family viewing MLK's body at Spelman College's Sisters Chapel.
Late for that assignment, he dashed around another photographer and climbed on top of a pew, moving toward the casket by stepping over pew after pew to get the picture.
"I was shaken when I left there," he remembered. "I had my eyes on the floor because I knew everyone was looking at me for my despicable behavior. But I didn't leave without the picture."
Years later, in 1977, King’s assassin, James Earl Ray, escaped from a Tennessee prison. Thornell was on hand when Ray, muddy and haggard, was recaptured.
"The greatest fear for me was coming back without the photograph," he once said, reflecting on the violent times he covered. "The things that were happening there, you just kind of dealt with it and tried to photograph what was happening, because that was your bread and butter, that was your career. And your success depended on how well you did that day. Because tomorrow there's always another newspaper coming out."
The Associated Press has published few of his images in memorium.
He married Carolyn Wilson in 1964. He is survived by his son Jay, his daughter Candy Gros and a granddaughter.