Theodore Landsmark condemns violence and racism after the attack at city hall plaza

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Anti-Busing Protesters Attack Senator Kennedy

Senator Edward M. Kennedy, a supporter of the Boston busing regulations, was driven from an anti-busing rally on September 9, 1974. The protesters gathered at a City Hall plaza, and chased Senator Kennedy to a federal building while hurling eggs, tomatoes, and insults. The crowd broke a plate glass window in their attempt to drive the senator away.

Their vehemence was surprising, especially because the predominantly Irish-American crowd was made up of the Kennedy family's most stalwart supporters. His stance in favor of desegregation has left him out of their favors, and they made their feelings known.

In response to the attack, which included shouts of "You should be shot!" and comments about his family, Senator Kennedy had only a few calm, measured statements.

"People feel very strongly about these issues. They're entitled to their views."

After he disappeared into the Federal building--which was, ironically, named for his brother, the assassinated President John F. Kennedy--the crowd resumed the rally.

Coretta Scott King

The widow of the respected civil rights leader, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke to a predominantly caucasian crowd at a rally on the Boston Common on December 1, 1974. Her speech was the climax of a march and rally, which led demonstrators in support of the busing plan from the state house to city hall. She argued that the recent acts of violence against desegregation were more detrimental to national welfare than the busing itself. 

"Can anyone believe that people using or condoning acts of violence as well as vulgar racial epithets are making a democratic protest against busing? No. They are making a un-democratic assault on equality."

King was joined by Representative Robert Drinan, a Democrat from Massachussetts who also addressed the crowd.

Joseph Rakes

Joseph Rakes was seventeen years old the day of the protest at city hall. He is the young man portrayed in "The Soiling of Old Glory," attempting to spear Theodore Landsmark with an American flag. Rakes says "blind anger motivated me... When the busing started, it was, 'You can't have half your friends'- that's the way it was put towards us. They took half the guys and girls I grew up with and said, 'You're going to school on the other side of town.' Nobody understood it at [age] fifteen."

Rakes' actions at City Hall Plaza led to a conviction for assault with a deadly weapon and a two-year suspended sentence. 

Rakes is currently a labor forman living in Maine. He said in a recent interview "The picture-it says what it says, but it doesn't tell the whole story. You know, there's nothing I can do about it. I just move on in my life."

Theodore Landsmark

Theodore Landsmark was born May 17, 1946 in Kansas City, Missouri. He moved to New York as a child, where he attended Stuyvesant High School and St. Paul's Preparatory. He attended Yale for college, where he earned a BA in political science, before continuing on to Yale's law school. A veteran of civil rights advocacy, Landsmark had marched from Selma, Alabama to Montomery, Alabama in a civil rights march, and had also attended Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s funeral.  

On April 5, 1976, Landsmark was going to a meeting at City Hall. As he entered City Hall Plaza, a protester spotted him and yelled a racial slur at him. Another protester punched Landsmark and he fell to the ground. As he got up, Joseph Rakes came after him with and American Flag and hit him with it several times. This entire incident lasted between fifteen and twenty seconds.

The attack broke Landsmark's nose, as shown in the photograph above. At the hospital, Landsmark requested that his nose be bandaged in a way to draw maximum attention.

At a press conference he held two days after the incident, Landsmark said he did not blame the students who attacked him. He labeled them as "poor, working-class victims of a system that used race to mask deeper economic divisions in American society." 

The incident turned Landsmark into a local celebrity and he became a spokesman for racial tolerance. 

Landsmark is currently a lawyer in Jamaica Plain.

Student Protesters

Before student protestors went out to City Hall Plaza, they gathered in city council chambers. There, Louise Day Hicks served the students hot chocolate and led them in the pledge of allegiance, depicted here.