Current Events > TIL police beat a decorated WWII veteran blind shortly after honorable discharge

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Isaac Woodard Jr. (March 18, 1919 September 23, 1992) was a decorated African-American World War II veteran. On February 12, 1946, hours after being honorably discharged from the United States Army, he was attacked while still in uniform by South Carolina police as he was taking a bus home.

On February 12, 1946, Woodard was on a Greyhound Lines bus traveling from Camp Gordon in Augusta, Georgia, where he had been discharged, en route to rejoin his family in North Carolina. When the bus reached a rest stop just outside Augusta, Woodard asked the bus driver if there was time for him to use a restroom. The driver grudgingly acceded to the request after an argument. Woodard returned to his seat from the rest stop without incident, and the bus departed.

The bus stopped in Batesburg (now Batesburg-Leesville, South Carolina), near Aiken. Though Woodard had caused no disruption (other than the earlier argument), the driver contacted the local police (including Chief Lynwood Shull), who forcibly removed Woodard from the bus. After demanding to see his discharge papers, a number of Batesburg policemen, including Shull, took Woodard to a nearby alleyway, where they beat him repeatedly with nightsticks. They then took Woodard to the town jail and arrested him for disorderly conduct, accusing him of drinking beer in the back of the bus with other soldiers.

Newspaper accounts vary on what happened next (and accounts sometimes spelled his name as "Woodward"), but author and attorney Michael R. Gardner said in 2003: In none of the papers is there any suggestion there was verbal or physical violence on the part of Sergeant Woodard. It's quite unclear what really happened. What did happen with certainty is the next morning when the sun came up, Sergeant Isaac Woodard was blind for life.

During the course of the night in jail, Shull beat and blinded Woodard, who later stated in court that he was beaten for saying "Yes" instead of "Yes, sir". He also suffered partial amnesia as a result of his injuries. Woodard further testified that he was punched in the eyes by police several times on the way to the jail, and later repeatedly jabbed in his eyes with a billy club. Newspaper accounts indicate that Woodard's eyes had been "gouged out"; historical documents indicate that each globe was ruptured irreparably in the socket.

The following morning, the Batesburg police sent Woodard before the local judge, who found him guilty and fined him fifty dollars. The soldier requested medical assistance, but it took two more days for a doctor to be sent to him. Not knowing where he was and suffering from amnesia, Woodard ended up in a hospital in Aiken, receiving substandard medical care. Three weeks after he was reported missing by his relatives, Woodard was discovered in the hospital. He was immediately rushed to an Army hospital in Spartanburg. Though his memory had begun to recover by that time, doctors found both eyes were damaged beyond repair.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Woodard

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Im sure they beat up literally thousands of veterans


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Shablagoo posted...

South Carolina police

theres your answer

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This is the point of blue lives matter, they want police free to brutalize black people.

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An eye for an eye makes the world go blind, but if anyone deserves it it's these monsters that brutally attacked an innocent man. Life in prison is the least they deserve.

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john rambo had similar shit happen to him

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16-BITTER posted...

If you're mad now wait til you read about how the trial went.

I figured there'd be no justice for this poor guy, but now I'm curious.

By all accounts, the trial was a travesty. The local U.S. Attorney charged with handling the case failed to interview anyone except the bus driver, a decision that Waring, a civil rights proponent, believed was a gross dereliction of duty. Waring later wrote of being disgusted at the way the case was handled at the local level, commenting, "I was shocked by the hypocrisy of my government ...in submitting that disgraceful case".[13]
The defense did not perform better. When the defense attorney began to shout racial epithets at Woodard, Waring stopped him immediately. During the trial, the defense attorney stated to the all-white jury that "if you rule against Shull, then let this South Carolina secede again."[14] (Due to disfranchisement of blacks in the South, they were also excluded from juries.) After Woodard gave his account of the events, Shull firmly denied it. He claimed that Woodard had threatened him with a gun and that Shull had used his nightclub in self-defense. During this testimony, Shull admitted that he repeatedly struck Woodard in the eyes.
On November 5, after 30 minutes of deliberation (15 according to at least one news report[4]), the jury found Shull not guilty on all charges, despite his admission that he had blinded Woodard. The courtroom broke into applause upon hearing the verdict.[13] The failure to convict Shull was perceived as a political failure by the Truman administration. Shull was never punished, dying in Batesburg on December 27, 1997, at age 95.

Yup, absolutely disgusting.

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KiwiTerraRizing posted...

This is the point of blue lives matter, they want police free to brutalize black people.

This happened 80 years ago. How does this have any relevance to how police work today?
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