The Best Years of Our Lives won the Academy Award for best picture of 1946. The now-classic movie tells the story of three veterans returning home at the end of World War II. When it turns out that they are all from the same town in middle America they share the final leg of their journey. During their brief time together, they form comraderies which continue through the film as each attempt to adjust to civilian life. However, the task is not easy. The world and the people that they left behind are not the same. As was the norm for the big screen in that era all the veterans in the movie are white.
But there were other veterans returning home who, like their white counterparts, were not the same as the men that went off to war. These men were black and brown. The war had changed them, but on the home front, Jim Crow was still alive and well. Black soldiers had fought for the same freedoms in Europe and the Pacific as their white comrades. As a result, they were not willing to accept second-class citizenship in post-war America.
On February 12, 1946, Sgt. Isaac Woodard was on the last leg of his journey home to rural South Carolina. He had received his formal discharge from the Army earlier that day and still wore his uniform. His journey started in New Guinea in the South Pacific where he served with distinction for over three years, earning a battle star for unloading ships under fire.
On that fateful evening, Woodard was on a Greyhound bus when an altercation arose between him and the driver. When the driver cursed at him, Woodard responded: “God damn it, talk to me like I am talking to you. I am a man just like you are.” This uppity remark from a black man — even one in uniform — was too much for the driver. When the bus stopped in Batesburg, South Carolina, the driver summoned the police which brought Woodard into contact with the Chief of Police Lynwood Shull.
The altercation that enthused left Woodard permanently blinded. Shull would later admit to striking Woodard in self defense. Medical evidence would show that Woodard’s eyes were gouged out with an instrument consistent with the size and dimensions of Shull’s blackjack.
The plight of Woodard came to the attention of Orson Welles who featured the story on his nationally syndicated radio program Orson Welles Commentary that focused on contemporary political and social issues. His airing of the story galvanized the civil rights community across the nation and brought it to the attention of the NAACP and Thurgood Marshall. It also came to the attention of President Harry S. Truman, who was outraged.
Reluctantly, the federal government brought a case against Chief Shull for violation of Woodard’s civil rights. The case was assigned to the docket of United States District Court Judge J. Waties Waring, who heard his cases in the Charleston, South Carolina. Waring was a classic gentleman of the Old South with every stereotypical value consistent with a man of his class and station in 1940s South Carolina. He had never thought much about altering the status quo of African-Americans in southern society.
When the case came to trial, the federal government, knowing it would not get a conviction against a white man when the victim was black, put on a lackluster case against Shull. The all-white jury took less than half an hour to find the defendant not guilty. But the plight of Sgt. Woodard changed Judge Waring. He began to read and study about race relations in America. Woodard’s blindness opened Waring’s eyes to the reality of race in America.
It would also alter the views of President Truman. As a result of what happened to Woodard, Truman created the first federal commission on civil rights. Woodard’s story did much to spur Truman’s issuance of the executive order that ordered the desegregation of the U. S. military.
Richard Gergel, the author of Unexampled Courage: The Blinding of Sgt. Isaac Woodard and the Awakening of President Harry S. Truman and Judge J. Waties Waring, is a federal judge in Charleston, South Carolina. He holds the same seat in the same federal courthouse where Judge Waring presided. The book is the culmination of several years of extensive legal and historical research, some of which was drawn from records and transcripts in his own courthouse. Judge Gergel does a masterful job of putting the events into historical context and demonstrating the evolution of the civil rights decisions issued by the United States Supreme Court during the 1930s and 1940s that whittled away at the separate but equal doctrine that had been the law of the land since 1896.
While Woodard is the lynchpin of the story, there are other stories intertwined in this extremely readable work that chronical the changes in American social norms and laws in post-war America. Key among these figures is Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. There are also the victims of lynching during this period, and the black parents and voters who were brave enough to become plaintiffs in law suits that would ultimately end segregation. They demonstrated unexampled courage.
But the real story is the evolution of Judge Waring and his views of race. When he started making rulings that were at odds with long-time southern traditions and social norms, there was a move to impeach him from his seat on the federal bench. He was ostracized in his native land — abandoned by lifelong friends. But he was determined to uphold the words of the United States Constitution that all men are created equal. A direct quote from a dissenting opinion he wrote in a case finding segregated school to be unequal on their face ultimately ended up in the landmark decision of Brown v. Board of Education.
Nineteen Forty-Six may have been the “Best Years of Our Lives” for Hollywood but not for Isaac Woodard. Sadly, his story has largely been forgotten. Americans should all be thankful that Judge Gergel has brought to light a story that will at times anger the reader, especially when it is so often reminiscent of contemporary examples of police misconduct. But it will also warm the hearts of readers when they see that attitudes can be changed and there were some positive results that grew out of this tragedy.
The question is, will there be other Judge Waring’s among the judges and justices appointed by the current administration. Only time will tell.
C. Ellen Connally is a retired judge of the Cleveland Municipal Court. From 2010 to 2014 she served as the President of the Cuyahoga County Council. An avid reader and student of American history, she serves on the Board of the Ohio History Connection, is currently vice president of the Cuyahoga County Soldiers and Sailors Monument Commission and treasurer of the Cleveland Civil War Round Table. She holds degrees from BGSU, CSU and is all but dissertation for a PhD from the University of Akron.
One Response to “BOOK REVIEW: “Unexampled Courage,” reviewed by C. Ellen Connally”
Penny Jeffrey
Thank you, Judge Connally, for bringing this book to our attention!