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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