The Soiling of Old Glory
Encyclopedia
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
–winning photograph taken for the Boston Herald American in 1976 by Stanley Forman
Stanley Forman
Stanley Joseph Forman is a photojournalist who over a four-year period won a Pulitzer Prize three times while working at the Boston Herald American....
.
The photograph depicts a white teenager, Joseph Rakes, about to assault black lawyer and civil-rights activist Ted Landsmark
Ted Landsmark
Theodore C. Landsmark is the president of the Boston Architectural College and was previously the Dean of Graduate and Continuing Education at the Massachusetts College of Art...
with a flagpole bearing the American flag. It was taken in Boston on April 5, 1976, during a protest 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. According to Landsmark, Rakes was swinging the flag at him, not trying to spear him as it appears in the photo, and he narrowly missed.