Barbara Beckwith

The Soiling of Old Glory: The Story of a Photograph That Shocked America, by Louis P. Masur (Bloomsbury Press, 2008) focuses on Boston Herald freelance photographer’s photos of a Black passerby, attorney Ted Landsmark, being attacked by anti-busing protesters, to tell the story of the 1970s busing of Boston public school children and the backlash, especially by South Boston adults and youths. The drama of the attack was heightened by the irony of the American flag being used as a weapon.

This short, straightforward account, which includes 30 photographs and other illustrations, shows the background, the impact, and the long-term effect of this single violent incident. This incident is a major reason (along with Charles Stuart blaming “a Black man” for his wife’s murder, when he himself had done it) that people around the country, especially African Americans, still consider Boston to be racist city. The incident led to the defeat of three anti-busing politicians and led to John O’Bryant being elected, the first Arrican American to be elected to the School Committee in a city-wide election. The book brings the story up to date: white flight has caused the resegregation of the Boston schools; Ted Landsmark went on to work for Mayor Menino and became president of the Boston Architectural Center while his assailants

The author conveys the power of photography to create emblematic images that last far beyond the moment. He compares this Pulitzer prize-winning photograph to other eye-opening iconic photos, like that Gordon Parks took of an African American charwoman standing in front of the American flag with mop and broom.

It also corrects some inaccuracies and misimpressions (the flagpole attacker appeared to be trying to spear Landsmark but was actually swinging the flagpole sideways, not at his victim; the man who appears to be pinning Landsmark’s arms was actually trying to help him; Landsmark’s injuries were the result not of the flagpole, which never made contact with him, but from the beating inflicted by other anti-busing youths, and the retaliatory stoning/beating of a white man incurred more dire injuries). The author does not use these misimpressions to excuse the attackers, but rather to show how photographs don’t necessarily accurately portray the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Boston’s busing-era history may be well-known to those who lived in the city at the time, but it’s important that it is revisited in fresh ways so that lessons can be learned and so that this low point in Boston’s history is never forgotten.

Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present, by Harriet A. Washington (Doubleday, 2007) documents the ways in which African Americans’ bodies have been exploited by medical researchers over the centuries and the range of involuntary, invasive, non-therapeutic experimentation. It also addresses cutting edge 2lst century issues around DNA testing and race-specific drugs.

Medical institutions have finally started to take aggressive action to deal with racial health care disparities and to respond to African Americans’ reluctance to participate in experimental drug research and medical procedures. Medical Apartheid gives that reluctance a context.

Washington, a journalist/editor who has been a fellow in ethics at Harvard Medical School and a research scholar the National Center for Bioethics at Tuskeee University, makes that case for frank acknowledgement of past abuses as a necessary step toward regaining the trust and involvement of African Americans in research that can, if done ethically, benefit them.

Those abuses range from accepted slave era practices such as forced no-anesthesia surgery, to 20th century “Mississippi appendectomies” (non-consensual post-partum sterilizations), radiation of African American school children to study burns and side effects, lead paint damage studies in the 1990s that promised but failed to protect the children involved, to a 1990 testing of Norplant (later recalled) in mostly Black middle school health clinics and a 2004 study that gave HIV positive children in foster care high doses of experimental, risky anti-viral drugs without parents’ knowledge or permission. Washington warns that although the Human Genome Project showed that biological race doesn’t exist, race-based labeling of new drugs like BiDil gets approved by the FDA, looking for a genetic fix and ignoring the chief non-genetic causes of heart disease in African Americans.

The author describes the rationalizations by abusive white researchers in earlier centuries, based on imaginary physiological differences (slaves are closer to animals, with wool for hair, Blacks have smaller brains, larger genitals, longer heels, an extra rib), some of which persist to this day: Henry Louis Gates, as a pre-med student in Tanzania, heard Australian doctors claim that “Blacks don’t feel pain the same way we do.”

Whistle-blowers are given their due: the Southern Poverty Law Center sued to end that program’s federal financing. Journalists have uncovered abuses such as exploitative experimentation on Black prisoners, exposed by Jessica Mitford. SDS students rallied against Tuskegee experiments. SNCC stopped legislation to sterilize unwed mothers on welfare. And more recently, the ACLU has protested DNA swabbing of thousands of innocent men of color during police “sweeps” for crime suspects deemed dark-skinned.

Washington makes clear that the medical establishment that must earn back the trust of Black Americans. The book also serves as a “buyer beware” guide for African American families, especially on the issue of informed consent.

Tulia: Race, Cocaine, and Corruption in a Small Texas Town, by Nate Blakeslee (Public Affairs, 2005) describes an infamous 1990s case of racial injustice when 38 men in Tulia, Texas were arrested and prosecuted. It shows the web of indifference, complacency, trust and therefore susceptibility to corruption, inadequacy of public defenders.

Stereotyped assumptions blinded the sheriff, prosecutor, judge and juries, who failed to ask this common sense question: how could one fourth of the Black adult male population of the town be drug sellers? Why was the only evidence the word of one “deep cover” officer? Why were no drugs were found in the early morning raid on the accused men’s homes? None of this made sense yet the Texas justice system sent these men to jail for up to 90 years.

The book is written like a legal thriller: the book’s “immersion style” approach allows you to get to know each person involved in the case, taking readers through the ups and downs of the case, without revealing which legal tactic might work and which man will end up in jail. You keep reading because you know these men and want to find out what happened to them. Some readers may not be able to tolerate so many details, but these show clearly that this was a stunning case of injustice, incompetence, and racism.

On the positive side, Tulia also shows how determined individuals — the Black father of one of the arrested men, the white Tulian who decided the trials weren’t fair, and a young NAACP lawyer just out of law school who took on the case  — can stand up for what’s right and prevail.

For anyone who thinks the U.S. justice system guarantees a fair trial, this case shows the role of incompetence, ambition for higher office, rationalization, legal manipulation, and cover-ups which led to injustice in this case. It’s a powerful read. The case led to significant changes in Texas legal practices. Despite outrageous injustice, justice did prevail, in the end.

Un-Standardizing Curriculum: Multicultural Teaching in the Standards-Based  Classroom, by Christine E. Sleeter (Teachers College Press, 2005) argues that teachers faced with a standards-based curriculum can still teach in a way that’s intellectually challenging and ways to stress multiple-perspectives, equity issues, and social problem solving, while still meeting high standards. It’s written for teachers and other educators who want to teach intellectually exciting work that looks at perspectives of underrepresented groups and addresses issues of power, but who feel unable to introduced anything that “won’t be on the test.” Sleeter takes a relatively academic approach but uses examples of specific teachers, especially teachers of color, who have found ways to use multiple perspectives that relate to students’ lives, while teaching specific required concepts and skills. Her basic points: Teaching to the test can be deadening. Teaching skills and information through a project-based approach can prepare students for tests while allowing students to explore intellectually challenging, individualized, and social justice-oriented topics. It shows the web of indifference, complacency, trust and therefore susceptibility to corruption, inadequacy of public defenders. Finding ways to effectively and dynamically teach in this current “teach to the test” era is definitely cutting edge. It is essential for our children’s futures that they be taught in a way that relates to their lives and that gives them a chance to look at real problems and see themselves as equipped to take part in solving them.