Unexampled Courage: The Blinding of Sgt. Isaac Woodard and the Awakening of America

by Richard Gergel

Overview

How the blinding of Sergeant Isaac Woodard changed the course of America’s civil rights history.

The book that inspired the 2021 PBS American Experience documentary, The Blinding of Isaac Woodard.

On February 12, 1946, Sergeant Isaac Woodard, a returning, decorated African American veteran, was removed from a Greyhound bus in Batesburg, South Carolina, after he challenged the bus driver’s disrespectful treatment of him. Woodard, in uniform, was arrested by the local police chief, Lynwood Shull, and beaten and blinded while in custody. Outraged by the incident, President Harry Truman established the first presidential commission on civil rights and his Justice Department filed criminal charges against Shull.

In July 1948, following his commission’s recommendation, Truman ordered an end to segregation in the U.S. armed forces. An all-white South Carolina jury acquitted Shull, but the presiding judge, J. Waties Waring, was conscience-stricken by the failure of the court system to do justice by the soldier. Waring described the trial as his “baptism of fire,” and began issuing major civil rights decisions from his Charleston courtroom, including his 1951 dissent in Briggs v. Elliott declaring public school segregation per se unconstitutional. Three years later, the Supreme Court adopted Waring’s language and reasoning in Brown v. Board of Education.

An unprecedented historical investigation, Richard Gergel’s Unexampled Courage is “a revealing window into both the hideous racial violence and humiliation of segregation . . . and the heroic origin of the legal crusade to destroy Jim Crow” (The New York Times Book Review).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780374718510
Publisher:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date:	03/26/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	345
File size:	26 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Richard Gergel is a United States district judge who presides in the same courthouse in Charleston, South Carolina, where Judge Waring once served. A native of Columbia, South Carolina, Judge Gergel earned undergraduate and law degrees from Duke University. With his wife, Dr. Belinda Gergel, he is the author of In Pursuit of the Tree of Life: A History of the Early Jews of Columbia, South Carolina.

Table of Contents

Introduction: A Collision of Two Worlds

PART I: THE BLINDING
1. A Tragic Detour
2. A Wave of Terror
3. "The Place was Batesburg"
4. The Bystander Government

PART II: THE AWAKENING
5. "My God . . . We Have Got to Do Something"
6. The Isaac Woodard Road Show
7. The Gradualist
8. A "Baptism in Racial Prejudice"

PART III: THE CALL TO ACTION
9. "I Shall Fight to End Evil Like This"
10. "We Know the Way. We Need Only the Will"
11. Confronting the American Dilemma
12. There Will Be No Fines
13. Fighting the "Battle Royal"
14. Driving the "Last Nail in the Coffin of Segregation"

Conclusion: Unexampled Courage

Appendix: A Forensic Analysis of the Blinding of Isaac Woodard
Notes
Index

Editorial Reviews

…Richard Gergel's remarkable book about the early legal stages of the civil rights movement…is a revealing window into both the hideous racial violence and humiliation of segregation in the period immediately after World War II, and the heroic origins of the legal crusade to destroy Jim Crow. Gergel, a United States district judge in South Carolina who presided in the Dylann Roof trial in 2017, has written an engrossing history, animated by the stories of several key characters.

The New York Times Book Review - David W. Blight

Richard Gergel presents a deeply researched account of [Isaac] Woodard’s tragic story and weaves it into a larger narrative . . . The definitive account of Woodard’s blinding.” —Kenneth W. Mack, The Washington Post

"Remarkable . . . riveting . . . a revealing window into both the hideous racial violence and humiliation of segregation . . . and the heroic origin of the legal crusade to destroy Jim Crow . . . an engrossing history . . . The great value of Unexampled Courage is that it might garner a broad audience for the kinds of heroism involved in this history of litigation." —David W. Blight, The New York Times Book Review

"Gergel’s hallmark is an emphasis on how people at every level contribute to the making of history...He makes that point memorably in Unexampled Courage. Hopefully it will nurture the ground from which will arise more effective efforts in our own time to confront the ongoing menace of racially motivated police violence." —Randall Kennedy, The American Prospect

"Packed with overlooked history . . . Gergel recounts [the story of Sergeant Woodward] with compelling prose, revealing how a single injustice led to some of the nation’s most important civil rights victories." —Eric Deggans, NPR

“A fascinating historical and legal investigation . . . Gergel reintroduces oft-forgotten civil rights heroes in this captivating, deeply researched work that is likely to draw in general readers, historians, and legal scholars alike.” —Karl Helicher, Library Journal

“Gergel presents a compelling account of a case that helped point the way for broader, more intense, and more effective efforts in the civil rights movement.” —Jay Freeman, Booklist

“In this enlightening study, judge and historian Gergel illuminates the far-reaching effects of an individual act of cruelty . . . This is an important work on the prehistory of the civil rights struggle and an insightful account of how a single incident can inspire massive social and political changes.” —Publishers Weekly (starred)

“A federal judge from South Carolina examines a rarely mentioned 1946 race-based crime . . . Gergel is both an astute researcher and an engaging writer, bringing this significant story to vivid life . . . civil rights history at its most compelling.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred)

“Unexampled Courage, set in the Jim Crow South after World War II, recovers a pivotal moment in America’s civil rights movement. This remarkable story reminds us of the enduring power of the rule of law, even under the most daunting circumstances, when men and women stand for justice. A timely book; a monumental achievement.” —Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor, Harvard University

“Drawing on his exhaustive investigation of the brutal encounter between a black soldier and a southern police officer, Richard Gergel widens the lens on a critical moment in American history. Unexampled Courage tells a riveting story about the personalities and forces that converged in the aftermath of World War II to fuel the movement that would dismantle Jim Crow and transform the nation.” —Patricia Sullivan, Professor of History at the University of South Carolina and author of Lift Every Voice: The NAACP and the Making of the Civil Rights Movement

“Unexampled Courage is a searing work of history that must be read in today’s America: an account of the fight for civil rights that reminds us just how much we depend on the bravery of a few to right the wrongs of the many. Reading it is an emotional journey. There are tears of rage, but also of admiration for the extraordinary courage of a brutalized and blinded black soldier; of a southern judge whose conscience drove him to oppose his racist heritage; and an American president who risked everything to do what he believed to be right at a time when the United States hoped its moral leadership would resonate around the world.” —Christopher Dickey, author of Our Man in Charleston

From the Publisher

★ 2018-09-02

A federal judge from South Carolina examines a rarely mentioned 1946 race-based crime that profoundly altered officially sanctioned segregation of blacks in the white-dominated United States.

Gergel (In the Pursuit of the Tree of Life: A History of the Early Jews of Columbia, South Carolina, 1996) drew inspiration from a courageous predecessor judge who presided in the Charleston federal courthouse. However, the searing narrative does not open with the heroic judge, J. Waties Waring (1880-1968). Rather, the author opens in 1945, as roughly 900,000 black soldiers returned to the U.S. after serving their country in World War II. One of them, Isaac Woodard (1919-1992), was on a bus in rural South Carolina, planning to return to his family. The white bus driver perceived that Woodard, dressed in his military uniform, was acting disrespectfully, so he halted the bus and ejected him, handing him over to the racist local police chief, Lynwood Shull. Although unprovoked, Shull beat Woodard with a blackjack, with special force around his eyes. The wounds caused almost immediate blindness, and Woodard lay helpless in the local jail. Eventually, news of the beating reached civil rights activists, who made sure President Harry Truman heard about the brutality. That set in motion legal proceedings culminating in charges that were shocking at the time. At Truman's insistence, federal prosecutors filed criminal charges against Shull. The case unfolded in the courtroom of Judge Waring, and an all-white jury quickly acquitted Shull. However, the obviously unjust verdict shook Waring to his emotional core, and he spent the remainder of his career writing rulings meant to promote fairness for blacks in his courtroom, working remotely with such allies as the NAACP and Thurgood Marshall. President Truman reacted to the beating of Woodard by ordering racial integration of the U.S. military despite massive resistance. Gergel is both an astute researcher and an engaging writer, bringing this significant story to vivid life.

Civil rights history at its most compelling.

Kirkus Reviews