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The Soiling of Old Glory (c)

The high bidder on this item will win a signed (on the reverse side) and dated 8X10-inch black and white print of the Pulitzer Prize-winning photo, The Soiling of Old Glory, shot by WCVB-TV’s NewsCenter 5 videographer and 2016 Massachusetts Broadcasters Hall of Famer Stan Forman when he was a still photographer at the Boston Herald American.

Contributed by Stanley Forman

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia -- The Soiling of Old Glory is a Pulitzer Prize–winning photograph taken by Stanley Forman during the Boston busing crisis in 1976. It depicts a white teenager, Joseph Rakes, assaulting a black man, lawyer and civil rights activist Ted Landsmark, with a flagpole bearing the American flag (also known as Old Glory).

The image was taken for the Boston Herald American in Boston on April 5, 1976, during one in a series of protests against court-ordered desegregation busing. It ran on the front page of the Herald American the next day, and also appeared in several newspapers across the country. It won the 1977 Pulitzer Prize for Spot Photography.

Landsmark was active in trying to get more minority contractors in the construction industry, but he hadn't been paying attention to the busing protests. According to Landsmark, "I had difficulty finding a parking space in downtown Boston, and I was running a few minutes late for the meeting in city hall. So I was in a hurry and perhaps not paying as much attention as I might have as I approached a corner, where the young demonstrators were coming in the other direction. I did not see them until both they and I were at that corner."

Rakes was swinging the flag and trying to hit him, not trying to spear him as it appears in the photo, and he narrowly missed. Landsmark was bloodied during the incident. An examination of all the photographs in the roll Forman shot reveals that Rakes missed Landsmark with the flag. Although anti-busing activist Jim Kelly appears to pin Landsmark's arms behind him, he is actually helping Landsmark to his feet. Kelly later positions himself between Landsmark and the other protestors to protect the lawyer. Landsmark had already been knocked to the ground, losing his glasses and suffering a broken nose, by the time he got up the famous picture was taken.

Stanley Forman has been a photojournalist for WCVB-TV’s NewsCenter 5 since 1983.  As a still photographer for the predecessor newspapers of the Boston Herald, he won two consecutive Pulitzer Prizes for “Spot News Photography.” In 1976, he was honored individually with a Pulitzer for his sequence of photographs showing a young woman and a two-year-old girl falling from a collapsed balcony during a fire. The next year, he won for The Soiling of Old Glory, an African-American being assaulted by a white man wielding a flagpole as a weapon during the height of anti-busing unrest in Boston. He shared in the winning of a third Pulitzer Prize with the photography staff members of the newspaper for their photo-coverage of the Blizzard of ’78.