The Soiling of Old Glory Photograph, 1976

 

On April 5, 1976, Stanley Forman was early for his shift at the Herald American and decided to go to an anti-busing demonstration at Boston City Hall that another reporter was already covering.

Massachusetts had already been in place for two years in segregated school-busing, a plan under which students were bused to schools often away from their homes in an effort to diversify schools, but the old system was in favor of The opposition was still fierce.

Forman managed to capture a photograph that later became iconic. The photo shows a white teenager, Joseph Rex, attacking a black man, lawyer and civil rights activist Ted Landmark, as Landmark was walking to a meeting at the courthouse, carrying a flag bearing the American flag. Landmark was active in trying to bring more minority contractors into the construction industry, but was simply not paying attention to the protests.

According to Landmark: “I was having trouble finding a parking space in downtown Boston, and I was running a few minutes late for a meeting at City Hall. So I was in a hurry and probably not paying as much attention as I should have as I approached a corner where young protesters were coming in the other direction. I didn’t see him until he and I were both on that corner.”

The rake was waving the flag and trying to hit him, not spear him as appears in the photo, and he narrowly escaped injury. The landmark was left bleeding during the incident.

Examination of all the photographs in the Roll Forman shot shows that Rex missed the landmark with the flag. The landmark had already been knocked to the ground, his glasses lost and his nose broken, by the time he woke up, the famous photo had been taken.

Rex was convicted of assault with a deadly weapon and sentenced to two years in prison and two years of probation. The prison sentence was suspended. In 1983, Boston police issued a warrant alleging that Rex had beaten his girlfriend's brother to death.

He fled prosecution but returned in 1988 after murder charges were dropped. Rake suffered the stigma of being known as the "Flag Kid", but eventually turned his life around by marrying and having a family while working as a construction worker and later in hazardous waste.

The next day, the photo appeared on the front pages of the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune and the San Francisco Chronicle, among many others, and inside the New York Times. It won the 1977 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography.