FILE - The 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. (AP Photo/Jack Thornell, File)
Former Associated Press photographer Jack Thornell ‘s Pulitzer Prize-winning picture of a shotgun-felled James Meredith looking back toward his would-be assassin on a Mississippi highway in 1966 became an enduring image of the Civil Rights Movement.
Thornell died Thursday at a hospital in the New Orleans suburb of Metairie from complications from kidney disease. He was 86.
He worked for the AP from 1964 to 2004 and had a variety of assignments over the years, photographing politicians, natural disasters and crime scenes. But the struggle for racial justice punctuated Thornell’s wire service career from the beginning, and he covered the integration of a Mississippi Gulf Coast school on his first day of work for the New Orleans bureau.
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This is a photo gallery curated by AP photo editors.
FILE – 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. (AP Photo/Jack Thornell, File)FILE – Former Associated Press staff photographer Jack Thornell speaks during an interview in Harahan, La., Feb. 7, 2018. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)FILE – New 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. (AP Photo/Jack Thornell, File)FILE – 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. (AP Photo/Jack Thornell, File)FILE – Mayor 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. (AP Photo/Jack Thornell, File)FILE – A 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. (AP Photo/Jack Thornell, File)FILE – South African Bishop Desmond Tutu denounces his country’s apartheid policy of racial separation in New Orleans, Sept. 7, 1982. (AP Photo/Jack Thornell, File)FILE – Actress 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. (AP Photo/Jack Thornell, File)FILE – The 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. (AP Photo/Jack Thornell, File)FILE – A prisoner lights a cigarette in the maximum security section of the Louisiana State prison at Angola, in December 1975. (AP Photo/Jack Thornell, File)FILE – Sen. 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. (AP Photo/Jack Thornell, File)FILE – Republican presidential candidate Ronald Reagan, left, moves through the crowd shaking hands at the Neshoba County Fair in Philadelphia, Mississippi, Aug. 3, 1980. (AP Photo/Jack Thornell, File)FILE – Amy 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. (AP Photo/Jack Thornell, File)FILE – Students at Jackson State College peer from a window that was shot out by police on campus May 15, 1970. Two youths died as police riddled windows of a girl’s dormitory they claimed they were returning sniper fire. (AP Photo/Jack Thornell, File)FILE- A 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. (AP Photo/Jack Thornell, File)FILE – Presidential 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. (AP Photo/Jack Thornell, File)FILE – Carl Wright drinks from a broken pipe amid the ruins of his father’s service station in Gulfport, Miss., in the aftermath of Hurricane Camille. (AP Photo/Jack Thornell, File)FILE – Coretta 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. (AP Photo/Jack Thornell, File)FILE – 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. (AP Photo/Jack Thornell, File)
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