Below is the crafted news article based on the details provided:
RICH CREEK, Va. — Gene Herrick, a retired Associated Press photographer who covered the Korean War and is known for his iconic images of Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, and the trial of the killers of Emmett Till in the early years of the Civil Rights Movement, died Friday at the age of 97.
In 1956, Herrick photographed Rosa Parks being fingerprinted after refusing to move to the back of a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. That same year, he captured an image of King smiling while being kissed by Coretta Scott King on the courthouse steps after being found guilty of conspiracy to boycott the city’s buses.
He was so proud to be a journalist. That was his life, Herrick’s longtime companion Kitty Hylton said. He loved The Associated Press. He loved the people of the AP. He was so grateful to have had all the adventures that he had.
Herrick also covered the trial of two white men in the killing of the 14-year-old Till, a Black youth who was abducted, tortured, and lynched in Mississippi. The two men were found not guilty in 1955 by an all-white jury and admitted to the murder a year later in an interview with Look Magazine.
I’ve come pretty close to getting killed many times with guns and having guns put in my chest in the riots in Clinton, Tennessee and places like that, Herrick said in a 2015 interview for AP’s corporate archives.
With an illustrious career spanning decades, Gene Herrick leaves behind a legacy of powerful visual storytelling that captured pivotal moments in American history.
