"The Soiling of Old Glory"

Anti-busing riot, City Hall plaza, Boston, April 5, 1976:
In the center of the photo is Ted Landsmark, then a 29-year-old African-American attorney who was hurrying to a meeting at City Hall and inadvertently walked into the middle of a demonstration against desegregation. The crowd had emerged minutes before from visiting the City Council chamber, where they had been invited by Boston School Committee member and white resistance leader Louise Day Hicks. Once outside, they had encountered and fought with a group of African-American students on a tour, when Landsmark arrived. The person who looks like he is about to spear Landsmark with the flagpole is a high school student named Joseph Rakes. The man who appears to be holding Landsmark to make him a better target is actually picking him up from where he had been knocked to the ground, and trying to protect him from the crowd. He is Jim Kelly, one of the organizers of the demonstration. The mayor of Boston witnessed the assault from his office window. Landsmark suffered a broken nose and bruises all over his body. Rakes was swinging the pole at Landsmark, not trying to spear him with it, and he missed. Nevertheless, the photo became iconic of white racist resistance to civil rights. The picture was made by Stanley Forman, a photographer for the now-defunct Boston Herald American. It won the Pulitzer Prize.

Landsmark left law for architecture and is now the president of Boston Architectural College. He was previously the Dean of Graduate and Continuing Education at the Massachusetts College of Art. Kelly became prominent in Boston politics, and was elected to City Council in 1983 where he remained a strong opponent to civil rights until his death in 2007. Rakes was convicted of assault with a deadly weapon and received a two-year suspended sentence. In 1983, he was arrested for murder in a separate case, but the prosecution was dropped. When last interviewed, he was a construction foreman in Maine. Louise Day Hicks had a long political career on the School Committee, and was elected to a term in Congress. She died in 2003, at the age of 87.

While I was still young at the time, I was already reading the newspaper when this happened,  but don't remember seeing the picture. I doubt my hometown paper would run it, because it was not that many years since we had had our own race riots, and the paper's content showed a seriously racist streak.

The incident in Boston's City Hall plaza happened in many of our lifetimes. Just something to think about when anyone says that we live in a post-racial society.

More pictures after the jump.

(Via P6.)

White racist high school students saying the pledge of allegiance in Boston City Council chamber the day of the riot in City Hall plaza. In the center, Rakes holds the flag:

This picture shows photographer Stanley Forman to the left moments before taking his Pulitzer photo, as Landsmark is beaten to the ground with what appears to be a second flagpole, center. Rakes is in the background, charging forward with the flag held high. Foreground center-right, the man in the dark jacket and light-colored pants who is starting forward to help Landsmark is Jim Kelly:

Comments

[Frank]

Great post. Thanks for helping us keep our eyes open.

Boston and Chicago are easily the two most segregated cities in the USA.