It has been 50 years since the Pulitzer-Prize winning photo “The Soiling of Old Glory” was taken as a busing desegregation protest erupted throughout City Hall Plaza in Boston.
The photo, which was taken on April 5, 1976, shows a young white man gripping an American flag and aiming it at a young Black man during the protest. The image drew national attention for how it vividly captured racial unrest during the busing crisis in the 1970s.
“The photograph has had significant impact over the decades because it was taken during a bicentennial year where the country was celebrating a number of democratic principles which in fact were being contradicted by what the photo depicts,” said Theodore “Ted” Landsmark, the Black man captured in the photograph…