Isaac Woodard, African-American Veteran, Beaten, Blinded in South Carolina; Incident Provokes National Outrage
Hours after being discharged from the Army following World War II on this day, Sgt. Isaac Woodward, an African American veteran, was taken from a bus in Batesburg. South Carolina, beaten, savagely blinded by the police chief, and then arrested.
The incident played a significant role in persuading President Harry Truman to appoint the President’s Committee on Civil Rights, the first-ever presidential committee or commission on civil rights and a landmark event in the history of the civil rights movement.
The twenty-six year-old Woodward had served a three-year tour of duty in the Pacific during World War II, and was decorated three times, receiving the American Campaign Medal and two others. He was discharged in Atlanta, Georgia earlier on this day and boarded a bus for his home in Winnsboro. South Carolina. Many other African-American and white soldiers were also on the bus, and reported they mingled and talked freely, despite the prevailing segregation law in both Georgia and South Carolina. The incident began when Woodard asked the bus driver to stop at the next town so he could use a rest room. There were no rest rooms on buses at that time, and regulations required drivers to stop is a rider requested it. Woodard and the driver exchanged angry words over this stop, but the driver did stop. Woodard asked the bus other times before the stop in Batesburg. There were reports that Woodard and other soldiers had been drinking.
In Batesburg (incorrectly cited as Aiken, SC in initial reports), the police chief Lynnwood Shull and the only other officer responded to the bus. When Woodard tried to explain his earlier conflict with the bus driver, Chief Shull struck him in the head with his black jack. The Chief arrested Woodard and en route to the jail stopped and repeatedly beat Woodward again with his black jack. At one point, the Chief drove his black jack into each of Woodard’s eyes, blinding him. Woodard was convicted the next morning and fined $50, of which he paid $4.00. Woodard was later sent to a VA hospital in Columbia, SC, where the medical staff confirmed the seriousness of his injuries, including his blindness.
Reports of the brutal incident aroused national outrage. The famed film director Orson Welles discussed it on his radio show, Orson Welles Commentaries on July 26th. The famed folk singer Woody Guthrie wrote and recorded a song entitled, The Blinding of Isaac Woodard. (Woodard’s name is sometimes erroneously spelled Woodward.) The lyrics are included in the book Woody Guthrie, Born to Win, pp. 229-231. (Whether there is any surviving recording of the song is not clear.) A coalition of civil rights groups, which included the NAACP, the ACLU, the AFL, the CIO, quickly organized the National Emergency Committee Against Mob Violence, and held a rally to raise support for Woodard. The rally was attended by 23,000 people and raised $10,000 (about $130,000 in today’s dollars).
NAACP leaders reported the incident to President Harry Truman, along with other evidence of lynchings and attacks on African Americans. in a meeting at the White House on September 19, 1946. Truman was shocked and both opened a Justice Department investigation into the case and promised to create what would become the President’s Committee on Civil Rights, the first national civil rights commission.
The President’s Committee issued its report, To Secure These Rights, on October 29, 1947. Truman then took further actions in support of civil rights. He delivered a civil rights legislative program to Congress on February 2, 1948, and even more important, on July 26, 1948 issued an executive order desegregating the U.S. armed forces. Truman’s actions have been overshadowed by Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, but he was the first civil rights president in modern times.
Read the new book on the case: Richard Gergel, Unexampled Courage: The Blinding of Sgt. Isaac Woodard and the Awakening of President Harry S. Truman and Judge J. Waites Waring (2019)
Listen to a version of The Blinding of Isaac Woodard: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4A7A5VGjSFk
Read the report of Truman’s Civil Rights Committee, “To Secure These Rights”: http://www.trumanlibrary.org/civilrights/srights1.htm
Learn more: Steven F. Lawson, To Secure These Rights: The Report of Harry S Truman’s Committee on Civil Rights (2004)
Visit the National Museum of African American History and Culture here