“The Soiling of Old Glory” was taken by Stanley Forman
“The Soiling of Old Glory” was taken by Stanley Forman on 5th April 1976. The photo amazed as the top Pulitzer prize for news breaking photograph during the Boston busing crisis. The picture shows a white young man attacking a black man with a flagpole of an American flag. The event happened when Landsmark met with a group of student demonstrators at a comer around the city hall in Boston.
The picture is iconic because it was taken in Boston in the time of Bicentennial. Also, the idea of student demonstrators using the American flag to attack an unarmed black man was just something frightening and shocking. After the event, people around started using the incident as a symbol for all wicked kind of racial hatred. A notable miscommunication of the photograph is that the person holding Landsmark from behind is not holding him for a kill. Jim Kelly is trying to pull him away from the violence. The image displays a black man being beaten with an American flag, but in reality, Joseph Rakes, the person holding the flag, was misunderstood for using the flagpole as spear where he was waving it at him.
From the image, one can learn that the culture is very visual-oriented but misinterpret pictures in many ways. Society takes images literally without putting in mind that a photo is only one moment in time. Boston photograph was so influential as it benchmarked the measure of race relations even to the rest of the nations. It was also taken during the reconciliation era when movements like antibusing movements were gaining more popularity. The photograph has grown more influential as the flag as become an important symbol in society.