A 2019 NPR Staff Pick How the Blinding of Sergeant Isaac Woodard changed the course of America\'s civil rights history On February 12, 1946, Sergeant Isaac Woodard, a returning, decorated African American veteran, was removed from a Greyhound bus in Batesburg, South Carolina, after he challenged the bus driver\'s disrespectful treatment of him.
Richard Gergel\'s Unexampled Courage details the impact of the Blinding of Sergeant Woodard on the racial Awakening of President Truman and Judge Waring, and traces their influential roles in changing the course of America\'s civil rights history..
Board of Education .
Three years later, the Supreme Court adopted Waring\'s language and reasoning in Brown v.
Elliott declaring public school segregation per se unconstitutional.
Waring described the trial as his baptism of fire, and began issuing major civil rights decisions from his Charleston courtroom, including his 1951 dissent in Briggs v.
Waties Waring, was conscience-stricken by the failure of the court system to do justice by the soldier.
An all-white South Carolina jury acquitted Shull, but the presiding judge, J. armed forces.
In July 1948, following his commission\'s recommendation, Truman ordered an end to segregation in the U.
S.
He established the first presidential commission on civil rights and his Justice Department filed criminal charges against Shull.
President Harry Truman was outraged by the incident.
Woodard, in uniform, was arrested by the local police chief, Lynwood Shull, and beaten and blinded while in custody.
A 2019 NPR Staff Pick How the Blinding of Sergeant Isaac Woodard changed the course of America\'s civil rights history On February 12, 1946, Sergeant Isaac Woodard, a returning, decorated African American veteran, was removed from a Greyhound bus in Batesburg, South Carolina, after he challenged the bus driver\'s disrespectful treatment of him
