Photo Of The Day

*The Soiling of Old Glory* is a Pulitzer Prize–winning photograph taken for the Boston Herald American in 1976 by Stanley Forman.

The photograph depicts a white teenager, Joseph Rakes, about to assault black lawyer and civil-rights activist Ted Landsmark with a flagpole bearing the American flag. It was taken in Boston on April 5, 1976, during one in a series of protests 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.