Sgt. Isaac Woodard, February 12, 1946

Isaac Woodard, from Fairfield County, South Carolina, joined the U.S. Army in October 1942, serving in the 429th Port Battalion as a longshoreman in the South Pacific, at times under heavy fire. He rose to the rank of sergeant and received an honorable discharge on February 12, 1946, at Camp Gordon, Georgia.

That same day, still in uniform and sitting near the rear of the bus next to (and sharing a bottle with) a white soldier, Woodard traveled from Augusta, planning to meet his wife in South Carolina and move with her to New York. At one stop, Woodard asked the driver, Alton Blackwell, for time to go to the rest room; Blackwell replied, “Hell, no. God damn it, go back and sit down. I ain’t got time to wait.” Woodard replied, “God damn it, talk to me like I am talking to you. I am a man just like you.” Per bus company instructions, Blackwell reluctantly let Woodard go.

When they reached Batesburg, South Carolina, however, Blackwell found the town’s only two policemen. Woodard was taken off the bus. When he tried to explain, Chief Lynwood Shull hit him over the head with his blackjack and told him to “shut up.” Leading Woodard out of sight of the bus stop, Shull beat Woodard unmercifully, hitting him repeatedly in the eyes with the end of his billy club before leaving him alone in the jail overnight. When Woodard awoke he could not see. Shull made him wash his face and took him to the town judge. Woodard was pronounced guilty of being drunk and disorderly and fined forty-four dollars, all the cash he had.

Woodard, now totally and permanently blind, was treated in a VA hospital in Columbia, South Carolina, for two months. He was only allowed partial VA disability benefits because he had been discharged from the army five hours before he was injured. His wife left him, and his sisters brought him to New York.

Isaac Woodard, 1946

The NAACP took up Woodard’s case, but the War Department declared it had no jurisdiction because Woodard was “a civilian at the time of the incident.” After an NAACP publicity campaign, an FBI investigation was opened. Orson Welles read Woodard’s FBI affidavit on his radio program, bringing a flood of complaints to the White House and the DOJ from outraged Black veterans and citizens.

A benefit concert for Woodard in New York featuring heavyweight champion Joe Louis and many famous Black musicians drew over 25,000 people. Woody Guthrie sang his new song, “The Blinding of Isaac Woodard.” From the proceeds, Woodard was able to buy a house in New York, but the city later took it by eminent domain to build a housing project.

In 1947, civil rights leaders met with President Truman. When Walter White gave a graphic description of Woodard’s beating, Truman responded, “My God! I had no idea it was as terrible as that! We have got to do something.” The DOJ opened criminal charges against Lynwood Shull, but their tepid presentation and closing argument were unsuccessful before the all-white South Carolina jury. Truman, however, established the President’s Committee on Civil Rights and became the first U.S. president to address the NAACP, calling for “freedom and equality to all our citizens.” He issued Executive Orders 9980 and 9981, prohibiting discrimination in federal offices and requiring “equality of treatment and opportunity” in the armed services.

Another long-lasting effect of Woodard’s trial was that it opened the eyes of Judge J. Waties Waring to the horrors of racism, and in 1949 Waring presented Thurgood Marshall with a clever strategy to challenge segregation altogether, rather than simply argue for greater equality under the “separate but equal” doctrine. That case became part of Brown v. Board of Education, through which the Supreme Court declared in 1954, “The doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place.”

Sgt. Isaac Woodard died in 1992. In 2018 the town attorney of Batesburg-Leesburg expunged his conviction from the record.