The Soiling of Old Glory: The Story of a Photograph That Shocked America

by Louis P. Masur

Sometimes a moment can change history. This one took 1/250th of a second.

The photograph strikes us with visceral force, even years after the instant it captured. A white man, rage written on his face, lunges to spear a black man who is being held by another white. The assailant's weapon is the American flag. Boston, April 5, 1976: As the city simmered with racial tension over forced school busing, newsman Stanley Forman hurried to City Hall to photograph that day's protest, arriving just in time to snap the image that his editor would title "The Soiling of Old Glory." The photo made headlines across the U.S. and won Forman his second Pulitzer Prize. It shocked Boston, and Racial strife had not only not ended with the 1960s, it was alive and well in the cradle of liberty.

Louis P. Masur's evocative "biography of a photograph" unpacks this arresting image in a tour de force of historical writing. He examines the power of photography and the meaning of the flag, asking why this one picture had so much impact. Most poignantly, Masur recreates the moment and its aftermath, drawing on extensive interviews with Forman and the figures in the photo to reveal not just how the incident happened, but how it changed the lives of the men in it. The Soiling of Old Glory , like the photograph it is named for, offers a dramatic window onto the turbulence of the 1970s and race relations in America.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, American History, Politics, Photography, Adult, Read For School

240 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 2008

Reviews

[Vannessa Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

The photograph strikes us with visceral force, even years after the instant it was captured. A white man, rage written on his face, lunges to spear a black man who is being held by another white. His weapon is the American flag.―April 5, 1976

…one commentator called it “the shot heard around the world for its indelible portrait of American racism,”

Author Masur was thorough in an easy to follow language that even a non-experienced reader of non-fiction can follow. The Soiling of Old Glory was a great source of American History and photojournalism. Author Masur took us on a fantastic journey of American history that many of us were not familiar with or had forgotten. The Soiling of Old Glory was an informative read.

[Penny Ramirez · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is astonishing to me to discover events that occurred in my lifetime of which I've been utterly unaware. Does that make me naive? Perhaps. The disheartening part is that, in the nearly 50 years that have passed since this incident occurred, not a lot has changed. Racism and class stratification are still rampant. Public school systems across the nation continue to struggle with underfunding, along with a lack of teachers and resources. Busing isn't the problem or the solution now, just as it wasn't in the 70s. I don't have the answers, but I'll continue to pick up books like this one in an effort to understand how we've gotten to the place we are, with the hope of moving forward.

[Sandy D. · Rating 5 out of 5]

First of all, here's the photo: http://www.umass.edu/legal/Hilbink/lp...

Boston, anti-busing rally, 1976 (the Bicentennial overabundance of flag imagery made the photo even more shocking at the time, I think)

Masur takes this Pulitzer-winning photo as a wonderful starting part and examines who was in the picture, what led them to that place and time and their actions on that day, how the photographer got the shot, a history of segregation in education, the controversy over school busing to desegregate cities, racism (especially in Boston) and race relations, a short history of the American flag and how images of it have been used in art in the 19th and 20th centuries, the role of photojournalism in the news, how photos can mislead viewers (though this photo isn't particularly misleading; the Black guy was beaten by a bunch of white teenagers, though he didn't actually get stabbed with the flagpole. It was just swung at him in the scuffle) and what happened to everyone in the photo 30 years later.

It's all fascinating, very well-written, and would be a great history book for hs or college students to read. And it has a lovely index and a bibliographic essay and Masur ties it all in nicely to 9/11 and current politics. It's amazing how much things we think are new (conservative criticism of the "liberal media elites", for instance) are much the same as they were 30 years ago.

[Byron · Rating 4 out of 5]

Got this for free a while back and I was kinda dreading reading it. Why would I want to read an entire book about a photograph? What could it possibly tell me that I couldn't already figure out just from looking at it? Was it going to somehow convince me that a black guy getting impaled by an American flag is somehow a good thing? (It's certainly amusing, uh, in a sense.) Turns out I was wrong. The story of the events leading up to the famous photograph, the people involved, and its aftermath, is madd interesting. The Soiling of Old Glory takes you behind the famous photograph (literally behind it) to explain to you, among other things, why the white kid is so upset (aside from him being a racist sack of shit), what they were doing there in the first place, why the black guy is wearing such a fancy suit (no, he's not there to bail his bitches out of jail), the significance of the flag as a symbol, so on and so forth. Like the best of NPR, it left me feeling slightly "enriched."

[Sara · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was very disappointed in this book. I thought it started out well, then veered into a very very long discussion about "relevant" works of art. I love art, as you all know, but I thought the whole middle section was a bit overblown. I think it could be two books, one about the Busing context of the photo, and one about the art history context of the photo. It seems like they smushed two together, in my opinion, unsuccessfully.

[debbie · Rating 4 out of 5]

i'm halfway through this book and i just began it today...it is a fascinating and very interesting look at a photo that is taken in boston in 1975 which shows a black man being beaten by white protesters...one of the protesters is holding an american flag...the book talks about the taking of the photo, boston's history of racial unrest, and the history of the flag, old glory...

[Andrea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Louis Masur balances the effect of capturing a moment in time with the surrounding events to give the reader a more comprehensive understanding of that incident. Although a photograph freezes time, the event is not in a vacuum. There is history leading up to it and there are consequences after it. Masur first analyzes the composition of the photograph and the technology used. He thoroughly discusses how the icon of the flag has evolved and how its meaning has changed over years and decades. He also gives us an insight into the political and economic environment of 1976 Boston. And then he tackles the multifaceted issue of racism. This is not just a picture, nor the photographer just lucky, it has real people with unique stories that make up the landscape of a city and a society during a volatile time in history. Understanding all of that is essential to comprehending the extensive impact this picture had and has on Boston and the country. I highly recommend this book to get a glimpse into Boston's and the country's struggle with racism and what it means to be patriotic because this struggle is not just in the past, it is still being played out today as exemplified with the controversies surrounding the racially fueled protest of kneeling during the National Anthem.

[Ownbymom Ownby · Rating 4 out of 5]

This turned out to be a fascinating book, focusing on a variety of topics such as photography as art, the history of the American flag in terms of the power it evokes, the school busing controversy in Boston, and an analysis of "The Soiling of Old Glory" photograph which won a Pulitzer prize.

[Cory · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some of the history of desegregation and racial tensions in Boston was interesting, but it just felt like the author read WAY too much into the photo.

[Anti Racism · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book made me cry. I had hoped my city would have changed since the soiling of old glory. But no, racism still is as horrible as ever. The players have changed, but my sorry remains the same.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Accessible history of the Boston busing crisis.

[Andrew R. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wasn’t expecting the book to contextualize American attitudes and artistic depiction of the flag, but I appreciate the added history in conjunction with discussions of Boston during the 1970s

[Todd · Rating 4 out of 5]

Who would have guessed you could write 240 pages about one photograph? Well, you can't, but you can write 240 pages about where it was, the times in which it was taken, the people involved, the circumstances, what resulted from it being taken, and so on. And there's a lot to say.

This predates my arriving in Boston by about five years, but the aftermath was still unfolding well after I got here, so I do know much of the story and know a few of the people involved. (Jimmy Kelly was my city councilor and Billy Bulger was my state senator for many years, more is the pity.)

This is the story of Stanley Forman's famous, Pulitzer Prize winning photograph from back when the Herald American (later, The Herald) was a real newspaper and not the pile of rubbish it is today. It's an excellent read and an important story, although I think the author went a little overboard in idolizing the victim of the beating. Yes, he's an important, thoughtful, and good man who did some good things, but few people are as saintly as portrayed here. There's also a sad lack of information about the flag wielder. He's reduced to a few paragraphs in an afterword which gives glimpses of a story that's equally fascinating and deserves to be told. It's a big shortcoming.

But in spite of the significant shortcoming, the book is full of some great research that is told well. Things like, why and when did the flag become such a touchstone symbol? It was during and after the Civil War, prior to that, it was just a flag. I also did not know that Forman was the guy who photograph another (at least locally) famous photograph of a mother and daughter falling off a collapsing fire escape during a fire which appeared a year earlier also in the Herald.

Definitely a worthwhile read.

[Heather Vinson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I finished this book as background readings for US History conference in Boston in 2015 titled, "The Rise and fall of the Postwar American City." The story about the photograph, a Pulitzer Prize winning photograph, entitled “The Soiling of Old Glory” is compelling and evident that racism and the interpretation of the Civil Rights Movement in the North played out in as violent methods than it did in the more familiar Jim Crow South. Subsequent chapters on the history of the American flag, Boston's role in the American Revolution seemed like a stretch to take a well written article into a fully fleshed out book.

[Beth · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was only 5 when this photo was taken so I do not have any personal memories of this event. The first half of the book was very interesting as the actual events are described leading up to the assault. I really appreciated the photographs included so I could see what was being discussed. The second part of the book was less interesting because it was more of a history of the symbolism of the flag etc. But over all a interesting book with details of how the main participants were affected by the events and what they had done since then.

[Jeff]

This photograph, taken at the height of Boston’s busing crisis, still retains its power to shock more than 30 years later. Masur’s study of the picture and the incident where it was taken — by no means as simple as it appears at first glance — illuminates the history of that time as well or better than some far longer books do. At once an analysis of the uses to which an image can be put, an examination of the meaning of the American flag in popular culture, and a meditation on how far we’ve come since the 1970s, this little book covers a lot of territory brilliantly.

-Alan

[Jon]

Ignore the pompous title--which was the name given by photographer Stan Forman to the photo this book is about--and read this piece of living history. Masur does a great job of telling the stories of three Bostonians involved in that city's school-busing crisis of the 70s: Forman, anti-busing protester Joseph Rakes, and attorney-activist Ted Landsmark. Fascinating and very well written, this ranks with Paul Cowan's fine piece on the same topic, included in Cowan's collection THE TRIBES OF AMERICA.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked up this book because a grad school (teaching) professor had recommended it. I am too young to remember/have lived through busing in Boston so I was interested to read something about it. On the one hand, this books goes into WAY too much detail in parts, over-explaining things that don't need quite so much explanation and in other places, leaving quite a few gaps. Overall, I think I'd have preferred it if each chapter had been an interview with someone who had been a part of or affected by the photo to get their take on why it is such an important piece of American history.

[Chris Lemery · Rating 4 out of 5]

Louis Masur has written a very readable account of "The Soiling of Old Glory," a photograph from 1976 that almost everyone has seen but most know little about. Masur recounts the event during which the photo was taken, the parties involved, and the political and social reverberations of the photograph. Masur does an excellent job at explaining the visual imagery of the U.S. flag and the similarities of the picture with Christian iconography. The book is a very in-depth treatment of the event, though I'm not sure it deserves a full book-length treatment. Still a worthwhile read, though.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

I asked my upcoming U.S. history students to read this as a summer read. It's the story of an iconic photograph and tells the story of how it was interpreted and misinterpreted as well as setting it in context of other famous images of the American flag. The specific context is the Boston busing saga of the 1970s but it's a great example of looking at one specific text/document/artifact and being able to tell a much larger story from this one specific images.

[Marvin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Four stars primarily because of the topic. If you're familiar with the busing struggle in the 60s and 70s, much of the book is old ground. However, learning about the lives of the central characters in the photograph is quite illuminating, as is learning about the photographer. Not being a photographer I appreciated the sections dealing with the quality of the photo itself and its comparison to other iconic photos featuring Old Glory. It's a short and easy read.

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

interesting history of the event, good for photo buffs

[Walter · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5