1. Slate Magazine’s
slideshow
on
“The Soiling of Old Glory”

2. In his recent speech on race, Barack Obama
spoke about the legacy of racial hatred and
resentment in America. One of the events he
probably had in mind was the controversy over
busing that erupted in Boston in the mid-1970s.
A single photograph epitomized for Americans
the meaning and horror of the crisis. On April 5,
1976, at an anti-busing rally at City Hall Plaza,
Stanley Forman, a photographer for the Boston
Herald-American, captured a teenager as he
transformed the American flag into a weapon
directed at the body of a black man. It is the
ultimate act of desecration, performed in the
year of the bicentennial and in the shadows of
Boston's Old State House. Titled The Soiling of
Old Glory, the photograph appeared in
newspapers around the country and won the
Pulitzer Prize in 1977. The image shattered the
illusion that racial segregation and hatred were
strictly a Southern phenomenon. For many,
Boston now seemed little different than
Birmingham.
In 2006, when Deval Patrick became the first
black governor of Massachusetts, the Boston
Globe expressed hope that his inauguration
would "finally wash away the shameful stain of
that day in 1976." Last June, however, a
Supreme Court ruling forbade school districts
from assigning students based on their race,
and Patrick's administration has been forced to
find ways to avoid dismantling desegregation
programs throughout Massachusetts. The issue, copyright Stanley Forman
and the photograph, continue to haunt Boston,
and the nation.

3. In September 1974, a federal court ordered that the busing of students was one of the remedies to be
used in desegregating Boston's public schools. Protests and violence erupted in predominantly white
South Boston. Opponents denounced "forced busing" and took every opportunity to organize and march
in opposition. By April 1976, these rallies had become commonplace, and Forman, dispatched by the
Herald-American to take a photo of the latest one, was in no rush to get to City Hall. Before heading
over, he stopped first to visit his girlfriend, who worked nearby. The delay rewarded him. Because he
was behind the pack of protesters and reporters, he had a long view of the melee. Using a Nikon with a
20-millimeter lens, he steadied himself and snapped. The motor drive froze, so he switched to manual,
which forced him to take individual shots of the action. He didn't know what he had until he got into the
darkroom. Later, some commentators would criticize the photographers on hand that day for not coming
to the victim's aid. But in a sense, with his camera, Forman had.
Photograph © Stanley J. Forman.

4. Forman was already an accomplished
photographer. The previous year, he had
followed a firetruck to the scene of a fire
in Boston's Back Bay neighborhood. He
instinctively ran to the back of the
building, where he saw a fireman climbing
down from the roof onto a fifth-floor fire
escape to rescue a 19-year-old girl and
her 2-year-old goddaughter. As a firetruck
extended its ladder toward the girls and
their would-be rescuer, the fire escape
collapsed. The firefighter pulled himself to
safety, but the woman and child plunged
to the ground. Forman kept shooting, then
looked away. Still shaking, he developed
his pictures and found this chilling shot of
woman and child in free fall. (Forman
would learn later that the woman had died
but the child had survived.) The
photograph would lead to stricter fire
escape regulations, and it would win
Forman the first of his two consecutive
Pulitzers
Photograph © Stanley J. Forman.

5. Before the busing protestors poured out
onto the plaza, they had gathered in city
council chambers, where they were
greeted warmly by Louise Day Hicks, the
city council president and a leading
opponent of busing. She served the
students hot chocolate and then led them
in reciting the pledge of allegiance. Joseph
Rakes, a South Boston teen, had grabbed
the family flag before heading out to the
rally that morning. He stands, hand-over-
heart, with his classmates and friends. The
students were angry because their parents
were angry—because their neighborhood
felt under assault, and because for nearly
two years, ever since the federal judge
had ordered busing, life had not been the
same: classes disrupted, police at the
schools, national media in the streets.
That anger would soon be directed at
Theodore Landsmark, a lawyer hurrying to
a meeting at City Hall on behalf of the
Contractor's Association for which he
worked.
Courtesy the Boston Herald. Photograph originally published in the Boston Herald-American.

6. Spotting Landsmark, one protester yelled
a racial epithet. Suddenly a student
stepped forward and punched him.
Another hit him as well. He was kicked,
and he fell to the ground. As he rose,
Rakes came at him with the flag. The
entire incident lasted 15 or 20 seconds.
Though he was at City Hall on routine
business that day, Landsmark, a graduate
of Yale College and Yale Law School, was a
veteran of the civil rights struggles of the
1960s. He had marched from Selma to
Montgomery and attended King's funeral.
At the hospital, following his beating, he
made certain that his broken nose was
bandaged in such a way as to draw
maximum attention. He held a press
conference two days after the assault. In a
remarkable speech, he said he did not
blame those who attacked him. Indeed, he
said he identified with them as poor,
working-class victims of a system that
used race to mask deeper economic
divisions in American society. "We
continue to need jobs and housing and
high quality education and human
decency" for all people, he said.
Courtesy the Boston Herald. Photograph originally published in the Boston Herald-American.

7. Forman's photograph appeared on the
front page of the Herald-American. (At the
time, the quarto-size paper was owned by
the Hearst Corp. and competed with the
Globe for hard-news stories; it would be
transformed into a tabloid after it was sold
to Rupert Murdoch in 1982.) Forman's
image also appeared in newspapers across
the country, including the New York Times,
the Washington Post, and the San
Francisco Chronicle. But it almost didn't
appear at all. The Herald-American editors
vigorously debated whether publishing the
photograph would further inflame an
already explosive racial situation that had
made national headlines for nearly two
years. They feared reprisals and increased
violence. In the end, they published,
believing the image was too important to
suppress. Had Howard Hughes not died
the same day, the photograph might have
occupied even more space above the fold.
Courtesy the Boston Herald. Photograph originally published in the Boston Herald-American.

8. The photograph had an instant and
profound impact. At the Boston State
House, legislators debated a resolution
condemning the attack. It passed by voice
vote, with some representatives choosing
not to vote. Mayor Kevin White, who had
witnessed the assault from his office
window, and Gov. Michael Dukakis
denounced racism and mob violence. One
minister warned that war was being
declared against the black citizens of
Boston, while other religious leaders called
for calm. The opponents of busing did not
defend the attack, but they did blame the
media for one-sided reporting, saying that
the news seldom reported busing-related
incidents in which whites were the victims.
An outburst of retaliatory violence led to
the brutal beating of Richard Poleet, a car
mechanic who was driving through mostly
black Roxbury. An anti-violence march
organized by the mayor drew thousands,
though not the leaders of either the black
caucus or the anti-busing activists. Later
in the year, the Socialist Workers Party
used Forman's photograph as a
presidential election poster: "200 Years of
Racism Is Enough." The socialist candidate
received the most votes that year in the
history of the party. Photograph by Joe Rosenthal. Courtesy the Library of Congress.

9. In looking at Forman's photograph,
viewers made connections to other
images, but in particular to Paul Revere's
engraving of the Boston Massacre. The
visual parallels are striking. Both images
depict enclosed spaces from which there is
no escape. Both contain powerful
horizontal lines—the flag, the rifles—that
guide the eye. Indeed, the Landsmark
incident occurred within shouting distance
of the site of the Boston Massacre, which
counted a black sailor named Crispus
Attucks among its victims. It wasn't long
before Landsmark was compared to
Attucks, held up as a 20th-century victim
of the struggle against oppression. Ebony
asked what Attucks would have thought of
the assault and concluded that "he would
have understood the racism ... but it is
doubtful he would have understood the
insensitivity of public officials." Landsmark
himself made the connection as well,
saying to a reporter after the incident that
the assault occurred not far from where
"Crispus Attucks ... got his."
Courtesy the Library of Congress.

10. The Soiling of Old Glory was also
compared to Joe Rosenthal's photograph
of the flag-raising on Mount Suribachi.
Often considered the finest spot-news
photograph ever taken, and certainly the
most widely reproduced, Rosenthal's
photograph stood as a symbol of all that
was glorious about the United States: six
faceless men united in effort, their
exertion a perfect ballet of balance and
form. No less a figure than Sen. Ted
Kennedy made the connection a few
weeks after Forman's photograph
appeared: "There are two pictures in
which the American flag has appeared that
have made the most powerful impact on
me. The first was that of Iwo Jima in
World War II. The second was that shown
here in Massachusetts two weeks ago in
which the American flag appeared to have
been used in the attempted garroting of
an individual solely on the basis of his
color."
Photograph by Joe Rosenthal. Courtesy the Library of Congress.

11. African-Americans have often sought to
show their patriotism by taking ownership
of the flag. It is no accident that Barack
Obama delivered his speech on race with
flags displayed in the background. During
the civil rights movement, activists waved
the flag as a symbol of justice and equality
and embraced it as representing their
struggle. Forman's photograph disturbed
viewers for many reasons, but none more
so than the use of the flag to puncture the
dream of inclusion. Unfortunately, that
dream is still far from being fulfilled. On
Sept. 1, 2005, Associated Press
photographer Eric Gay took this shot of
84-year-old Milvertha Hendricks waiting in
the rain outside the Convention Center in
New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane
Katrina. Her brow is furrowed, and her
eyes stare blankly forward. The fingers of
her right hand slip beneath the fabric that
provides her only shelter. The flag has
become a mourning shawl. She appears to
be waiting for deliverance and wondering
whether it will ever come.
Photograph by Eric Gay/AP.