“To be African American is to be African without any memory and American without any privilege.” – James Baldwin
Has a photograph ever made you change your mind about an issue? For me, one photo didn’t just change what I thought, it changed how I think. That photo is Stanley Forman’s Pulitzer Prize-winning photo “The Soiling of Old Glory,” which captured a racial attack during the Boston busing crisis.
In 1955, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered that all public schools be desegrated with “all deliberate speed.” But “all deliberate speed” didn’t come for Boston until almost two decades later when Federal Judge W. Arthur Garrity ordered that Boston’s public schools be desegregated by means of “busing.”
Boston was (and still is) a highly segregated city. Blacks lived in black neighborhoods and whites lived in white neighborhoods. (Even beyond that, white neighborhoods were often largely segregated by ethic groups, e.g., Irish and Italians.) Because of that, unlike in the South, politicians didn’t need to enact laws to segregate the schools. They just made sure that school assignments were based on the already segregated neighborhoods. (Although, there was also much evidence that school administrators were taking other active and intentional steps to keep the blacks out of white schools.) Busing meant that black kids from black neighborhoods (like Roxbury) would be bused into predominantly white schools in white neighborhoods (like South Boston) and vice versa.
White residents reacted with rage and physical violence. Nowhere was the violence worse than in “Southie”, which was an overwhelmingly white, Irish Catholic, enclave. Southie residents attacked the buses carrying black students from Roxbury. They pelted the buses with bricks and stones. Eight black students were injured that first day. The protests and violence continued for years.
Despite the violence which was clearly directed by whites against people of color, Boston’s whites (especially the Irish) always denied that it had anything to do with race. Rather, they argued, things were best when people knew their neighbors and looked out for each other. Neighborhood schools were an important part of that. No laws prohibited anyone from living in whatever neighborhood they wanted. If a black family wanted their kids to go to Southie High, all they had to do was move to Southie. The court had no right to compel Boston parents to send their children to schools outside their own neighborhoods. Besides, moving students from a failing school in Roxbury to a failing school in Southie wouldn’t address the system’s larger failures or improve outcomes for anyone.
I was raised by my French-Canadian mother and I lived 65 miles away on “The Cape,” so this Irish vs. black conflict in Boston didn’t actually have any real impact on me. But, for several reasons, I always strongly identified myself as a Boston Irish Catholic, like my absent father. As part of that, I very much adopted the Irish community’s “anti-busing” arguments.
That changed in April 1976 when I first saw Forman’s photo. In an instant, the photo didn’t just change my mind, it changed me. It didn’t just change WHAT I thought about busing—it changed HOW I thought.
In the photo (which you can see above), white men are violently restraining a black man in a three-piece suit. (Attorney, Educator and Civil Rights advocate Ted Landsmark. You should read about him or hear him talk. Truly. ) Another white man (a student from Southie) appears to be about to spear Mr. Landsmark with the American flag.
It was 1976—the year of our “Bicentennial.” I was 12, and I was in love with Boston and the American Revolution. Every night, I eagerly looked forward to the “Bicentennial Minutes” on CBS. I read every book I could get my hands on, loved visiting Revolutionary sites, and participated in several events and reenactments.
My very first thought was that the photo reminded me of Trumbull’s “The Battle of Bunker Hill.” artgallery.yale.edu/…
Trumbull — The Death of General Joseph Warren on Breed’s Hill
The riotous scene, the flag, the pike. The action coming from the left. But my next thought was, “Hold on, aren't we the good guys.”
I had seen plenty of newspaper photos and news reports showing screaming white people with occasional acts of violence. But before this photo, nothing made me rethink the narrative that this was about community, not race. But here, with this photo, it became impossible to continue to ignore what had been obvious all along.
The only person being attacked in the photo is the ONLY BLACK PERSON in the photo. It’s clear from his three-piece suit that he just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and that he’s being targeted solely because of his race. No one is coming to this man’s aid. The racial anger of the white assailants is palpable and inescapable. What first hit me like an homage to The Battle of Bunker Hill suddenly now reminded me more of a picture of a Birmingham cop holding a black man by his cardigan as his snarling police dog attacks.
www.npr.org/...
The photo made me question my own motivations and rationalizations. In an instant, I realized that the opposition to busing was really about race—and had always been about race. That realization made me ask myself WHY did I believe those rationalizations? The answer was easy and obvious—I believed it because I wanted to believe it.
Truth be told, I realized I had always inwardly known the anti-busing arguments were nothing more than window dressing. The photo just made it impossible for me to keep lying to myself. It didn’t reveal the truth about busing to me, it revealed the truth about ME to me.
Since then, I’ve tried to actively drill down to figure out whether my positions are based on good faith reasoning or are just my own privileges and prejudices dressed up in finery. “Lipstick on a pig.” On several issues, it has caused me to change my mind where I initially found myself on the wrong side of history and human decency.
The photo also made me see our flag—"and the republic for which it stands”—in a new—and darker—light. The Boston Massacre occurred only about 100 paces from this assault. (You can see the Old State House in the background.) The first casualty of that incident (i.e., the first person targeted by the soldiers) was a black man, Crispus Attucks. And yet, black people in Massachusetts did not seem very interested in the Bicentennial. I suddenly realized why they did not share my zeal for celebrating this nation’s founding as a “land of liberty.”
There is nothing patriotic about the flag in this photo. Clearly, Mr. Landsmark has no claim to the flag. It is held by a white man, literally and figuratively. It is being used—literally—as a weapon to put this uppity, three-piece suit wearing, black attorney, back in his place. This is what the flag means to the black victim in the photo. His Yale diploma will give him no privilege from this white mob, and black children in Roxbury wouldn’t get the “privilege” of being treated as equals if the mob could prevent it.
In 1852, Frederick Douglas gave a July Fourth address where he famously said “This Fourth July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn.” Even today, how could any black American (other than Clarence Thomas) ever read, with anything other than bitterness and scorn, the words of the Declaration of Independence?
“ALL MEN are created equal"? It was an obvious lie when Jefferson wrote it (and Boston’s John Hancock signed his name to it) in 1776. In 1976, Forman’s “The Soiling of Old Glory” made me confront that it is, to a large extent, still a lie today. The question, then, is where do I want to be the next time there’s a photo of a Ted Landsmark being attacked (or a Ruby Bridges being jeered at)? Shall I do what I know to be right and go to my fellow human’s aid or shall I remain an observer, effectively supporting the injustice through my silence?
Next: Waking, Part 5 – In which I do not receive justice.
Previous Parts:
Waking, Part 1 - My Own Personal Journey
Waking, Part 2 - What Did He Expect?
Waking, Part 3 - My Very Own Mr. Tibbs
P.S., here’s one of several YouTube videos where you can hear Professor Landsmark talk:
