Minutes before he was beaten to the ground and had his nose broken, Ted Landsmark was just late.
Frantically searching for parking in downtown Boston, he knew he wasn’t going to make it on time for the meeting he was slated to attend at City Hall to discuss hiring minority workers in construction jobs.
Landsmark hurried toward City Hall with the coat of his three-piece suit trailing in the wind, cutting around the main plaza’s corner, when a swath of young, white anti-busing protesters came into view. The exchange that followed happened in only 15 or 20 seconds, but would set the city ablaze, largely because of one photojournalist’s decision to cover the rally.
Stanley Forman was expecting another routine anti-busing demonstration that morning 50 years ago on April 5, 1976. He felt no pressure to arrive on time, even stopping to give an apple to his girlfriend who worked near City Hall on his way to the rally, according to Louis P. Masur’s book about Forman and Landsmark.
