The Soiling of Old Glory: An Interview with Louis Masur

September/October 2008 Historically Speaking 41 The Soiling of Old Glory: An Interview with Louis Masur Conducted by Donald A. Yerxa LOUIS MASUR HAS WRITTEN INSIGHTFULLY ON A WIDE variety of topics, including books on the 1903 WorldSeries, capitalpunishment and American culture, andthe events of a angleyear, 1831. His latest book, The Soiling of Old Glory (Bhomsbury, 2008), is the story of a 1976 PulitzerPri^e-winning Boston Herald Americanphotograph that hadan enormous impact on race relationsandpubliceducation inBoston (andbeyond)fordecades. Masuristhe William R Kenan, Jr. Professor of American Institutions and Values, and Director of the American Studies Program, at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. Historically Speaking editorDonald Yerxa interviewedhim inAugust2008. Donald A. Yerxa: What are you attempting to accomplish with this book? Louis Masur: I'm trying to do several things: I'm trying to tell the story of an iconic photograph and its impact. In doing so, I seek to tell several stories in addition to the story of the making and meaning of Stanley's Forman's Pulitzer-prize winning photograph: the story of the busing crisis in Boston in the mid 1970s, die story of the flag in American culture, and the broader story of the dream of desegregation gone awry. Yerxa: Your book is described as a "biography of a photograph." What sorts of analyses go into such a biography? And did researching this book differ markedly from what you did for previous books? Masur: I've always been drawn to the world in a grain of sand approach to history. In this sense, the biography of a photograph is no different from any other sort of close, analytical reading of a text. Of course, visual culture presents its own interpretive challenges that, while similar to literary and historical analysis, also differs. The most important difference for me in terms of research was that for the first time I was writing about an event in which the participants were still alive and could talk back. This required me at times to act more as a journalist than historian, interviewing the people involved and sorting through what happened and what they remember about what happened . One of the pleasant aspects of writing about the 19th century is your sources do not talk back to you! Yerxa: Speaking of previous books, you've written books on the year 1831 and on baseball . What drew you to write a book on an infamous April 1976 photograph? Masur I've always been intrigued by die photograph , ever since I first saw it when I was an undergraduate in 1976. It pops up in various histories and I've always wondered about the story: what happened, why, what was die aftermath, why is the image so powerful? Independendy, I became very interested in visual history and wrote several essays , including one on John Singleton Copley's Watson and the Shark and another on the use of images in American history textbooks. When I contacted Stanley Forman and he told me to come to Boston for an interview, I knew I had my next book project. He was remarkably generous, and made available to me die contact sheet with all die images he shot die day. Seeing die sequence was eye-opening. Yerxa: Can you briefly set the stage for the taking of Forman's photograph? Masur. The crisis over busing in Boston erupted in 1974 when Judge Garrity issued an order requiring the desegregation of die public schools. One of die remedies was busing, and violence erupted when South Boston resisted efforts to bus students from Roxbury to South Boston High School. By April 1976, protests were commonplace. Boston had made national headlines. It came as something of a revelation to the nation that die problem of segregation was not exclusively a southern problem . From the point of view of the leaders of die opposition to busing, they didn't want outsiders dictating to them how to run their community. Recall that the remedy also required the busing of white students away from their local schools. On the morning of April 5, a group opposed to "forced busing" marched to City Hall. On their way out of a meeting widi City...