Isaac Woodard: Difference between revisions
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Revision as of 23:15, 17 March 2019
Isaac Woodard Jr. | |
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Isaac Woodard Jr. (March 18, 1919 – September 23, 1992) was a decorated
The attack left Woodard completely and permanently blind. Due to South Carolina's reluctance to pursue the case, President
Such miscarriages of justice by state governments influenced a move towards civil rights initiatives at the federal level. Truman subsequently established a national interracial commission, made a historic speech to the NAACP and the nation in June 1947 in which he described civil rights as a moral priority, submitted a civil rights bill to Congress in February 1948, and issued Executive Orders 9980 and 9981 on June 26, 1948, desegregating the armed forces and the federal government.
Early life and military service
Woodard was born in
On October 14, 1942, the 23-year-old Woodard enlisted in the U.S. Army at
Attack and maiming
On February 12, 1946, former U.S. Army
The bus stopped in Batesburg (now
Newspaper accounts vary on what happened next (and accounts sometimes spelled his name as "Woodward"), but author and attorney Michael R. Gardner said in 2003:
In none of the papers is there any suggestion there was verbal or physical violence on the part of Sergeant Woodard. It's quite unclear what really happened. What did happen with certainty is the next morning when the sun came up, Sergeant Isaac Woodard was blind for life.[3]
During the course of the night in jail, Shull beat and blinded Woodard. Woodard stated in court that he beat him for saying "Yes" instead of "Yes, sir".[4] Woodard also suffered partial amnesia as a result of his injuries.
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jabbed in his eyes with a billy club.[5] Newspaper accounts[6] indicate that Woodard's eyes had been "gouged out"; historical documents indicate that each globe was ruptured irreparably in the socket.[7]
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.
National outcry
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.[8][9] Woodard was the focus of Welles's four subsequent broadcasts.[10]: 329–331 "The NAACP felt that these broadcasts did more than anything else to prompt the Justice Department to act on the case," wrote the Museum of Broadcasting in a 1988 exhibit on Welles.[11]
Musicians wrote songs about Woodard and the attack. A month after the beating, calypso artist Lord Invader recorded an anti-racism song for his album Calypso at Midnight; it was entitled "God Made Us All", with the last line of the song directly referring to the incident.
Later that year, folk artist Woody Guthrie recorded "The Blinding of Isaac Woodard," which he wrote for his album The Great Dust Storm. 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 Atlanta...."[12]
Federal response
On September 19, 1946, seven months after the incident, NAACP Executive Secretary
A short investigation followed, and on October 2, Shull and several of his officers were
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".[13]
The defense did not perform better. 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."[14] (Due to disfranchisement of blacks in the South, they were also excluded from juries.) 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 (fifteen according to at least one news report
Isaac Woodard moved north after the trial during the Second Great Migration 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 (Section 15, Site 2180) in Calverton, New York.
Aftermath
Influence in American politics
In December 1946, after meeting with White and other leaders of the NAACP, and a month after the jury acquitted Shull, Truman established the Civil Rights Commission by Executive Order 9808; a 15-member, interracial group, including the President of
Truman made a strong speech on civil rights on June 29, 1947, to the NAACP, the first American president to speak to their meeting, which was broadcast by radio from where they met on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. The President said that civil rights was a moral priority, and it was his priority for the federal government. He had seen by Woodard's and other cases that the issue could not be left to the states and local governments. He said:
It is my deep conviction that we have reached a turning point in our country's efforts to guarantee freedom and equality to all our citizens. Recent events in the United States and abroad have made us realize that it is more important today than ever before to insure that all Americans enjoy these rights. When I say all Americans—I mean all Americans.[3]
On February 2, 1948, President Truman sent the first comprehensive civil rights bill to Congress.[3] It incorporated many of the 35 recommendations of his commission. In July 1948, over the objection of senior military officers, Truman issued Executive Order 9981, banning racial discrimination in the U.S. Armed Forces, and Executive Order 9980 to integrate the federal government. (Facilities had been segregated under President Woodrow Wilson). This was in response to a number of incidents against black veterans, most notably the Woodard case. The armed forces and federal agencies led the way in United States for integration of the workplace, public facilities and schools. Over the decades, the decision meant that both institutions benefited from the contributions of minorities.
Nevertheless, polls showed opposition to Truman's civil rights efforts. They likely cost him some support in his 1948 reelection bid against
Influence on popular culture
Orson Welles revisited the Woodard case in the May 7, 1955, broadcast of his BBC TV series, Orson Welles' Sketch Book.[16]: 417
Woody Guthrie later recalled, "I sung 'The Blinding of Isaac Woodard' in the Lewisohn Stadium (in New York City) one night for more than 36,000 people, and I got the loudest applause I've ever got in my whole life."[12]
In January 2019, a new book about the Woodard story and its aftermath, Unexampled Courage: The Blinding of Isaac Woodard and the Awakening of President Harry S. Truman and Judge J. Waties Waring, was published; it was written by Federal Judge Richard Gergel. [17]
Other
Woodard's conviction was vacated in 2018.[18]
A group led by Don North, a retired Army major from Carrollton, Georgia, received permission from the state of South Carolina to erect a marker regarding Woodard in Batesburg-Leesville.[19] In 2019 a historical marker of the attack was unveiled in Batesburg-Leesville.[18] The bottom part of the marker was written in Braille.[18]
See also
References
- ^ Andrew Myers, Resonant Ripples in a Global Pond: The Blinding of Isaac Woodard, "Honorable Discharge Paperwork", presented at American Humanities Conference, 2002
- ^ a b Woodard testimony, November 1947 Part 2
- ^ a b c d e Gardner, Michael R. (September 26, 2003). "Harry Truman and Civil Rights: Moral Courage and Political Risks". University of Virginia NewsMakers, TV News. University of Virginia. Archived from the original on September 17, 2006.
- ^ a b "U.S. Police Chief Acquitted of Assault on Negro". The Canberra Times. November 7, 1946. p. 1.
- ^ Myers (2002), Blinding Isaac Woodard: Woodard testimony, November 1947 Part 3
- ^ Newspaper accounts
- ^ Myers (2002), Blinding Isaac Woodard: "Isaac Woodard, Jr.: Medical reports"
- ^ Orson Welles Commentaries — "Affidavit of Isaac Woodward", July 28, 1946
- ^ "Orson Welles Commentaries". The Paley Center for Media. Retrieved 2014-03-27.
- ISBN 0-670-52895-1
- ^ Orson Welles on the Air: The Radio Years. New York: The Museum of Broadcasting, catalog for exhibition: October 28–December 3, 1988, p. 66
- ^ a b "The Blinding of Isaac Woodward" (Woody Guthrie; 1946) Archived 2005-01-14 at the Wayback Machine, Fortune City
- ^ ISBN 9780375414770.
- ^ The Stan Iverson Memorial Library, Infoshop & Anarchist Archives Archived 2005-03-10 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ a b Gardner, Michael. Harry Truman and Civil Rights: Moral Courage and Political Risks, Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois Press, 2002
- ISBN 0-06-016616-9
- ^ David W. Blight. "The Black Sergeant and the White Judge Who Changed Civil Rights History." New York Times, February 7, 2019, p. BR 10. [1]
- ^ a b c Updated 1:48 PM ET, Mon February 11, 2019. "Town honors an African-American WWII veteran blinded in a 1946 police beating". CNN. Retrieved 2019-02-14.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - ^ Myers, Christina L. (May 28, 2018). "Civil Rights Historians tell little known story of WWII vet". Associated Press.
Further reading
- Egerton, John. Speak Now Against the Day, Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1994.
- Gardner, Michael. Harry Truman and Civil Rights: Moral Courage and Political Risks, Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois Press, 2002.
- Yarborough, Tinsley. A Passion for Justice: J. Waties Waring and Civil Rights, New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.
- Gergel, Richard. Unexampled Courage: the Blinding of Sgt. Isaac Woodard and the Awakening of President Harry S. Truman and Judge J. Waties Waring, FSG, 2019.
External links
- Picture of Isaac Woodard
- Andrew Myers, Resonant Ripples in a Global Pond: The Blinding of Isaac Woodard, website includes associated primary documents - Isaac Woodard court transcripts, military documentation, et al., paper/website for 2002 American Studies Association conference
- The blinding of Isaac Woodard
- J. Elkins, "Practical Moral Philosophy for Lawyers" - discusses Woodard case in some detail
- Interview with Truman about Philleo Nash History, Oral History, Truman Library website
- "The Blinding of Isaac Woodard" - from the History in Song website
- Isaac Woodard at Find a Grave
- 1946 "ABC Lear Radio - Orson Welles Commentaries" including 6 episodes devoted or mentioning the case of Isaac Woodard