Salie asked Landsmark, "How do you feel when you look at an American flag?" "Sunday Morning" reached out to Joseph Rakes, the young man holding the flag in 1976. "For me, the ability to address many of the underlying causes of the structural racism that existed in the city at that time was more important than trying to settle a score with four young people who'd gotten caught up in a violent moment," he explained. And at this point, it's just my way into City Hall."Īs for the students who attacked Landsmark that day, he recalled, "The courts arranged for the young people to be brought into court to apologize to me, if I was willing at that time not to press charges against them." But I have since walked through here hundreds of times. Landsmark said he was unable to walk through the plaza for about two years after the event, "because it would conjure for me a lot of really negative feelings. Stanley Forman's picture of a white Boston youth attacking a Black lawyer with an American flag won the photographer a Pulitzer Prize. That photograph would earn Forman a Pulitzer Prize. "Oh, it was racism," Forman said of the scene. Stanley Forman's photograph of the assault appeared on the front page of the Boston Herald American, and was picked up by news services around the world. Landsmark was beaten by white anti-busing demonstrators at City Hall Plaza two days prior.Įd Jenner/The Boston Globe via Getty Images "I knew the potential impact that a photograph could have." Ted Landsmark speaks during a press conference at Harriet Tubman Hall in Boston on Apr. "I told him that I'd rather have the larger bandage," Landsmark said. Landsmark was taken to the emergency room at Mass General, where the Black doctor asked if he'd like a small bandage or a larger one. Stanley Forman's photograph was titled, "The Soiling of Old Glory." If it had, I probably wouldn't be here today." The assault on Ted Landsmark with an American flag. And that's when the famous photograph was taken. Landsmark continued: "And as I was regaining my balance, one of the young men who was carrying an American flag circled back to swing the American flag at me. I mean, he was being pummeled." Photographer Stanley Forman was at the scene outside City Hall in Boston on April 5, 1976, when white students protesting busing attacked a Black lawyer, Ted Landsmark. "And then, he's pushed, and he's rolling over. And that broke my nose and knocked off my glasses."įorman watched the scene unfold, shooting constantly. Landsmark told Salie, "I could hear their chants, the kind of chant that you would expect: 'Stop forced busing.' 'We want our neighborhoods back.' Then, one of the young men shouted out, 'There's a, get him.' The first young person to attack me hit me on my face.
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