Isaac Woodard was an honorably discharged WWII veteran. He had volunteered for the Army in 1942 and served in a labor battalion in the Pacific Theater. On Feb. 12, 1946, he was riding a Greyhound bus back to his home in North Carolina. When the bus stopped at a rest stop, Woodard asked the bus driver if he had enough time to go to the restroom. The white driver didn’t want to wait and they got into an argument, but Woodard did go and then returned to his seat. At the next stop in Batesburg, S.C., the bus driver called the cops. The police forced Woodard off the bus and took him to an alley where he was beaten with their billy clubs. He was taken to the jail where police chief Lynwood Shull continued the beating, including pushing into his eyes. He was taken before a judge who ruled that he was guilty of disorderly conduct and he was fined $50. He finally was brought to the local hospital where he received poor care. It took three weeks before his family was able to locate him. He was permanently blinded.
The injustice was reported nationwide by newspapers. Orson Welles devoted several episodes of his radio show talking about the case.Woodie Guthrie wrote a song entitled “The Blinding of Isaac Woodard”. The NAACP got involved. It convinced Pres. Truman to take action. He created a civil rights commission and desegregated the armed forces. His Justice Department brought the case to the US District Court in S.C. Shull and several of his cops were charged with using excessive or unnecessary
Shull admitted on the witness stand that he had clubbed Woodard, but not bad enough to hurt his eyes. The defense attorney used racial epithets on Woodard. The district attorney did a poor job obtaining evidence and testimony. The all-white jury took just only 30 minutes to find Shull and the others not guilty. When the decision was announced, the audience broke into applause. One of the three judges, J. Waties Waring dissented on the decision and was so incensed by the blatant racism. He became a proponent of civil rights in his courtroom. He encouraged Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP to take on some segregation in public schools cases. This led to the Brown v. Board of Education ruling in 1954.
https://time.com/5950641/blinding-isaac-woodard/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Woodard
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