Black History Month – February 12, 1946
Just when you think you have heard it all and think that you pretty much know the history of racial bigotry and the crimes against humanity committed in the name of the “superior race,” you run across the story of Sargent Issac Woodard Jr.
On February 12, 1946, former U.S. Army Sergeant Isaac Woodard Jr. was traveling on a Greyhound bus from Camp Gordon in Augusta, Georgia, where he had been discharged, to his family’s home in North Carolina. At a rest stop just outside of Augusta, Woodard asked the bus driver if there was time for him to use a restroom. The driver grudgingly acceded to the request after an argument. Woodard returned to his seat from the rest stop without incident, and the bus departed. The bus stopped in Batesburg near Aiken. Though Woodard had caused no disruption, the driver contacted the local police. The Chief of Police, Lynwood Shull) along with other policemen, forcibly removed Woodard from the bus. After demanding to see his discharge papers, they took him, including including Shull, to a nearby alleyway, where they beat him repeatedly with nightsticks. They then took Woodard to the town jail and arrested him for disorderly conduct, accusing him of drinking beer in the back of the bus with other soldiers. During the night in jail, Woodard was beaten again by Shull and was left totally blind for the rest of his life. The following morning, the police sent Woodard before the local judge, who found him guilty and fined him fifty dollars. The soldier requested medical assistance, but it took two more days for a doctor to be sent to him. Not knowing where he was and suffering from amnesia, Woodard ended up in a hospital in Aiken, South Carolina, receiving substandard medical care. Three weeks after he was reported missing by his relatives, Woodard was discovered in the hospital. He was immediately rushed to a US Army hospital in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Though his memory had begun to recover by that time, doctors found both eyes were damaged beyond repair.
Though the case was not widely reported at first, it was soon covered extensively in major national newspapers. The NAACP worked to publicize Woodard’s plight, campaigning for the state government of South Carolina to address the incident, which it dismissed. On his ABC radio show Orson Welles Commentaries, actor and filmmaker Orson Welles crusaded for the punishment of Shull and his accomplices. On the broadcast July 28, 1946, Welles read an affidavit sent to him by the NAACP and signed by Woodard. He criticized the lack of action by the South Carolina government as intolerable and shameful. The NAACP felt that these broadcasts did more than anything else to prompt the Justice Department to act on the case. Folk artist Woody Guthrie recorded “The Blinding of Isaac Woodard. He said that he wrote the song “…so’s you wouldn’t be forgetting what happened to this famous Negro soldier less than three hours after he got his Honorable Discharge down in Augusta.
On September 19, 1946, seven months after the incident, NAACP Executive Secretary Walter Francis White met with President Harry S. Truman in the Oval Office to discuss the Woodard case. Gardner writes that when Truman “heard this story in the context of the state authorities of South Carolina doing nothing for seven months, he exploded. The following day, Truman wrote a letter to Attorney General Tom C. Clark demanding that action be taken to address South Carolina’s reluctance to try the case. Six days later, on September 26, Truman directed the United States Department of Justice to open an investigation in the case. In his court testimony, Woodard stated that he was punched in the eyes by police several times on the way to the jail, and later repeatedly jabbed in his eyes with a billy club. Newspaper accounts indicate that Woodard’s eyes had been “gouged out”; historical documents indicate that each globe was ruptured irreparably in the socket. The case was presided over by Judge Julius Waties Waring. By all accounts, the trial was a travesty. The local U.S. Attorney charged with handling the case failed to interview anyone except the bus driver, a decision that Waring, a civil rights proponent, believed was a gross dereliction of duty. Waring later wrote of being disgusted at the way the case was handled at the local level, commenting, “I was shocked by the hypocrisy of my government in submitting that disgraceful case. When the defense attorney began to shout racial epithets at Woodard, Waring stopped him immediately. During the trial, the defense attorney stated to the all-white jury that “if you rule against Shull, then let this South Carolina secede again. After Woodard gave his account of the events, Shull firmly denied it. He claimed that Woodard had threatened him with a gun, and that Shull had used his nightclub to defend himself. During this testimony, Shull admitted that he repeatedly struck Woodard in the eyes. On November 5, after thirty minutes of deliberation, the jury found Shull not guilty on all charges, despite his admission that he had blinded Woodard. The courtroom broke into applause upon hearing the verdict. Shull was never punished, dying in Batesburg, South Carolina on December 27, 1997, at age 95.
Isaac Woodard moved North after the trial and lived in the New York City area for the rest of his life. He died at age 73 in the Veterans Administration Hospital in the Bronx on September 23, 1992. He was buried with military honors at the Calverton National Cemetery in Calverton, New York.
Welles devoted his July 28, 1946 program to reading Woodard’s affidavit and vowing to bring the officer responsible to justice.
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