In April 1976, a 29-year-old Black lawyer named Ted Landsmark was rushing through Boston’s City Hall on the way to a meeting. Landsmark was pushed to the ground, stomped on, had his nose broken, and a white man brandishing a flagpole with an American flag on it lunged at him.
It was during a protest over court-ordered busing to integrate Boston’s schools. Landsmark had marched in Civil Rights protests in Alabama, but said he never imagined he’d be attacked in Boston. The incident was captured in a Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph by Stanley Forman, called “The Soiling of Old Glory.”
“ That moment was indelibly embedded in my consciousness and really structured the identity that I’ve had in Boston for the last half century,” Landsmark said.
It’s been 50 years since he was attacked, and Landsmark is now 80 years old. He’s a professor of public policy and urban affairs at Northeastern University. For years, Landsmark said he did not have a copy of Forman’s photograph because the image was copyrighted, and the copyright holder was reluctant to give it to him. But now, he has a framed copy in his office on campus.
“ I have students who are studying policy who have never seen the photograph,” Landsmark said, “and who are stunned and appalled that that kind of racist event could have taken place in Boston, which now feels so different than it did then.”
Landsmark said the attack happened so fast, he didn’t have much time to think about it. But, remembering the advice of Civil Rights Movement activists he spoke with, he knew that it was his moment to say something he thought could be “healing.”
“I pointed out that I wasn’t angry with the young people, because I felt that they had been driven to that moment by a number of vicious, racist elected officials,” he said. “I directed any of my anger towards those elected officials who had gotten the kids really riled up and who weren’t trying to resolve the issue of education in Boston but were much more interested in their own political careers.”
When Landsmark went to the police station after he was attacked, he saw Forman’s photograph for the first time. He said he knew it would become iconic.
“ It wasn’t until a couple of days later that I really saw how widely distributed the photograph had been,” Landsmark said, “and how it was stereotyping what was going on in Boston in a way that put me at the center of some very horrendous political activity and very racist activity.”
The American flag has been used as a weapon in other instances since 1976. During the riot at the Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021, protesters used flag poles to attack police officers trying to guard the building.
Landsmark said when the flag was used against him as a weapon, he said his mother couldn’t even look at it for years.
“ I also know that the flag stands for democratic aspirations and inclusion,” he said. “If we look at it in that way, the flag and the photograph can be a statement of not so much what we hope the country will become, but what we aspire to avoid.”
Since he was attacked 50 years ago, Landsmark said he started collecting American flags. He said he especially likes to look for flag iconography in Navajo weavings and folk art from the South. He sees the flag as a symbol of hope, unification and optimism.
“ The flag does not belong to the radical right or to racists or to people who would try to use it to divide the country,” Landsmark said. “The flag really belongs to all of us, and when you see it being flown around the world as a symbol of hope and aspiration, you can’t help but feel that, if we embrace it for its best values, the country will come together and heal itself. What the photograph does is to emphasize how much work remains to be done.”
____
Robin Young produced this interview for broadcast with Todd Mundt. Grace Griffin produced it for the web.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
Copyright 2026 WBUR