Notes From D.R. | Random Thoughts on the Passing Scene

In less than three months, Boston will mark the 30th anniversary of one of the most horrid incidents in the city’s history. It was an incident that permanently damaged the perception of Boston in the rest of the country. The anniversary will be a moment of reflection. However, for political reasons, it will not be a moment of introspection.

On April 5, 1976, Theodore Landsmark, a black Boston businessman, was viciously attacked on City Hall Plaza by Joseph Rakes, a white South Boston resident who had just participated in a rally protesting forced busing. During the attack, Rakes grabbed an American flag that he had brought to the rally and attempted to ram it into Landsmark’s stomach: the photograph of the assault won then-Boston Herald photographer Stanley Forman a Pulitzer Prize.

The photo garnered attention nationwide, and left an indelible black mark on the city of Boston. Just a few months before the America’s Bicentennial celebration, the image of a black man being assaulted with the American flag was seen as a disgusting irony: in the "Cradle of Liberty," a descendant of slaves was being brutalized by a symbol of the freedom his ancestors had once been denied. To those who felt that all busing opponents were racists, the photo not only confirmed such an analysis, but also "proved" that America fundamentally hated blacks.

Landsmark later forgave Rakes, who received a two-year suspended prison sentence and two years’ probation for the attack. A 2001 Boston Globe article on the incident’s impact on Boston noted that while Landsmark went on to become of the city’s powerbrokers, Rakes’ life fell apart, as he faced tremendous ostracism and saw his dreams of a military career permanently deferred. (According to the story, Rakes ended up as a laborer on the Big Dig.)

To this day, the photo is cited as proof of the racist spirit that haunts Boston. No one can rationally argue that Landsmark was not a victim of bigotry on that day. However, some thirty years after Landsmark was assaulted, are we finally willing to acknowledge a politically incorrect truth: that the actions of US District Judge W. Arthur Garrity contributed in large measure to the climate of hostility that resulted in the Landsmark assault?

In June 1974, Judge Garrity ruled that the Boston Public School system was illegally segregated, and ordered that immediate steps be taken to remedy said segregation. Using plans crafted by left-wing "education experts" Charles Glenn and Charles V. Willie, Garrity imposed what can only be described as a draconian desegregation program–despite the fact that far less disruptive alternatives were proposed. These alternatives would have accomplished the same results with less racial acrimony, by Garrity, in his arrogance-based "wisdom," didn’t care.

As many predicted, racial violence roiled the city, as whites in South Boston and Charlestown who saw busing as deranged social engineering went after those who were, sadly, the most expedient targets of their anger–i.e., blacks–and blacks responded in kind. The city was possessed by a demonic rage throughout the fall of 1974 and the entirety of 1975–while Garrity and his buddies merrily whistled along.

The desegregation plan that Garrity and his aides designed was so severe as to guarantee that blacks and whites in Boston would be at each other’s throats. It didn’t help matters that Garrity implemented his rulings in a like-it-or-lump-it fashion that caused tremendous pain–emotional, psychological, and in so many cases, physical–throughout the city.

From this perspective, Landsmark was one of the many victims of Garrity’s overzealousness. The judge’s blunt-force actions had the effect of poisoning Boston’s racial atmosphere, causing people to look at either black or white skin as an incitement to violence.

This, of course, does not absolve Rakes of his criminal actions. He was a thug, and deserved a legal punishment far more severe than what he received. If he had a different weapon, he could have killed or crippled Landsmark. (In fact, Boston witnessed another horrid racial incident three and a half years later, when Darryl Williams was shot and paralyzed during a football game in Charlestown.)

However, while we all look back in horror on the events of April 5, 1976, let us not deny that the arrogant actions of a self-righteous judge presaged those actions. By implementing an inflexible, illogical desegregation plan, Garrity pumped black and white hearts full of hate. Any discussion of the racial climate in Boston during the 1970s must critically analyze Garrity’s role in creating the negative image that the city had, and still has.

UPDATE: Tamar Jacoby on the failure of busing in Boston.

SECOND UPDATE: If only they had listened back in the mid-’70s.

THIRD UPDATE: The horror of busing in Boston.

FOURTH UPDATE: Right to the end, Garrity was in denial about the problems posed by his busing plans.

FIFTH UPDATE: Why can’t Boston shed the image created during the Garrity ’70s?

SIXTH UPDATE: A 2004 Boston Globe profile of Landsmark.