American Experience (1988–…): Season 0, Episode 0 - The Blinding of Isaac Woodard - full transcript

Good morning,
this is Orson Welles speaking.

I'd like to read to you an affidavit.

"I, Isaac Woodard Jr.,
being duly sworn do depose"

"and state as follows."

"I am 27 years old and a veteran
of the United States Army,"

"having served for 15 months
in the South Pacific,"

"and earned one battle star."

"While I was in uniform
I purchased a ticket"

"to Winnsboro, South Carolina,
and took the bus headed there"

"to pick up my wife to come to New York"

"to see my father and mother."



"About one hour out of Atlanta,
the bus drivers got off"

"and went and got the police."

"The policeman grabbed me
by my left arm and twisted it"

"behind my back."

"I figured he was trying
to make me resist."

"I did not resist against him."

"Another policeman held his gun on me"

"while the other one was beating me."

"I started to get up, he started
punching me in my eyes."

"He knocked me unconscious."

"I woke up next morning
and could not see."

"They took me to the veteran's hospital"

"in Columbia, South Carolina."

"They told me I should join
a blind school."



You have a man

wearing a dress uniform.

He has medals on his chest.

All the symbols of sacrifice
and service are there

and it doesn't matter,
it just doesn't matter.

To a white Southerner in 1946,

nothing is more provocative
than a Black man in uniform.

You have law
enforcement coming with the full savagery

of Southern racism.

No one can say that
what happened to Isaac Woodard

was justified.

It just seemed to be something

that shouldn't happen in America.

Now it seems the officer of the law

was just another white man with a stick

who wanted to teach a Negro boy a lesson,

to show a Negro boy where
he belonged: in the darkness.

Are we going to have
people who live in the United States

and are less equal than others?

What are we going to do about this?

You say the North is bullying the South.

I'm afraid you're missing the point.

This isn't another battlefield
of the Civil War.

The sides aren't the blue and the gray.

They are the right and the wrong.

Who would have guessed

that the blinding of a heroic veteran

would be the beginning of the
end of Jim Crow in America?

Going home...

that's the sweetest words
a G.I. ever heard.

Back to the good old U.S.A.,

where just the formality of mustering out,

and then home sweet home.

For the G.I.s
discharged just hours earlier,

the wait inside the Greyhound
bus terminal was excruciating.

They were on the final leg
of a journey that had taken them

halfway around the world and back.

Freedom was so close
they could nearly taste it.

The soldiers that were there,

they had to have been jubilant and proud.

Happy to return home, on your soil.

So, it had to have been just
an exciting time for all of them

to go home and see their families, finally.

On the 8:00
Augusta to Columbia coach that night

was Sergeant Isaac Woodard,

headed home to Winnsboro,
South Carolina, to see his wife

for the first time in several years.

Woodard was still in uniform,

carrying a battle star
for bravery under fire,

and a final paycheck
from the U.S. Army

in the extraordinary sum of $695,

enough to start the kind of life

he hadn't dared dream of before the war.

Like the other 900,000
African-American soldiers

returning home from duty,

Isaac Woodard had come to see
this bright new future

as his due.

African Americans had
fought in all of the major wars

in American history, and there'd
always been this theme of

if we fight and we show our loyalty,

then we are going to advance
and be recognized

as more equal citizens.

And that dream had always been frustrated.

But World War II was actually
quite different from past wars

for African Americans because
it was a special kind of war.

This war, this particular war,

crystalizes around the idea
of this fight against fascism.

And that means that it is
a fight against inequality,

of suppressing groups of people
because of their race.

So you have Black soldiers coming home,

having been inculcated
with the idea that America

stands for something different
than fascism,

something different than racial
and ethnic discrimination.

Something better.

By 10:00
on that February evening,

Isaac Woodard was little more
than an hour away

from his homecoming in Winnsboro.

The atmosphere on the bus is jovial,

filled with the relief that soldiers feel

after surviving 15 months at war.

Black soldiers and white
soldiers are talking together,

joking together.

Eventually a bottle of whiskey
gets opened and passed around.

There were a few non-soldiers on the bus

and they were very uncomfortable

with the interaction between
the white and Black soldiers.

There were complaints to the bus driver

and the bus driver didn't like it.

There are, of course, in 1946,

no bathroom facilities

on public buses.

Isaac Woodard asked the
bus driver if at the next stop

he could be allowed to disembark
and to go to the bathroom.

And the bus driver tells him,

"Boy, go sit back down."

The bus driver cursed him.

Isaac Woodard cursed him back

and proclaimed his manhood.

He just said to the
gentleman, "You know, you don't have to

speak to me in that manner,
I'm a man just like you."

In other words,
"Give me respect."

Military training and service

turned a Black man from
the rural Deep South

with a fifth grade education

into a man willing to say words

that he knew could put his life at risk.

There is no doubt

when he said that,
that he was under any illusions

about what he was saying,
where he was saying it...

on a bus, at night, in the Deep South.

But he was a veteran.

He was wearing the uniform.

He was surrounded by veterans
who were wearing the uniforms.

They were returning from a war
that they had won.

And he was a stronger man because of it.

The bus driver is furious.

At the next town,

he goes looking for a police officer

to have Woodard removed from his bus.

Woodard's kind of perplexed.

He steps off the bus

and as he's trying to explain himself,

the police chief brings out his blackjack,

which is like a baton,

but it's spring-loaded
and it, it has tremendous force,

and hits Woodard over the head with it.

A soldier aboard the
bus watched as the officer took Woodard

by the arm and forced him around
the corner and out of sight.

"That is the last I saw of him,"

he would tell investigators
a few months later.

They started beating him
all across the head.

And they gouge his eyes out.

They didn't beat them out.

They put the stick in there and twisted it.

They threw him in jail and he told me

they poured whiskey over him
to say he was drunk.

He was arrested for, supposedly,
disorderly conduct,

disturbing the peace, and being drunk.

He was not drunk.

He was not being disorderly.

And he did not disturb the peace.

He spends the night in jail, unable to see,

in excruciating pain.

The next morning he is taken to the judge.

He is levied a fine,
but he can't see to sign

the paperwork that is put before him.

Ultimately, when Woodard
is examined by specialists,

they determine that he will
never see again.

The injuries are severe
and they are irreversible.

He will be blind for life.

You spend 42 months in the military,

overseas in the Philippines,
and you come home to this.

How can you just gouge someone's eyes out?

Anybody, how can...
you can't do that.

And it hurts me to even think
about it, but it happened.

It's sad.

Well, that was, I'd say,
a part of ignorance.

You know, that's the bottom
line, plain ignorance.

As World War II ended,

900,000 African-American veterans

returned to America...

75% of them to the South,

most of them to the rural South.

The war took Black
soldiers out of communities

where they had to adhere
to a certain set of social norms

in which they were subservient

and opened up possibilities.

Even a segregated army

gave chances for training and leadership,

and advancement and recognition.

Those in Europe had been treated
very respectfully.

And for the first time in their lives,

the color of their skin was not
the predominant

characteristic to which
they were identified.

They came home feeling
like they had done their duty

in defense of American democracy
and liberty.

But, when they returned home,

they largely saw nothing had changed.

White Southerners of that era considered

the returning soldiers
to be potential trouble,

not great American citizens.

As some would say,
they no longer knew their place.

Black soldiers were
especially threatening to

the racial mores
that undermined segregation.

Black soldiers were in uniform.

They wore emblems of authority.

They often carried themselves
with a sense of authority

that the enforcers of white supremacy

found particularly threatening.

Wearing
the uniform of the U.S. military

grants one the prerogatives of citizenship.

And Black men make no bones
about the fact that they feel

completely deserving of those prerogatives.

And they become the target.

So, in 1946, what you see is one incident

of racial violence after another.

There was little
recourse... and little protection...

for the African-American veterans

victimized in the South.

Investigating these hate crimes
often fell to a small team

of lawyers at the

National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People,

headed by Thurgood Marshall.

The N.A.A.C.P.
is just inundated with cases

of violence against Black soldiers,

wrongful court martials,

massive riots, slaughter.

And Thurgood Marshall's office
had files from floor to ceiling

of these cases.

A harrowing new report
landed in the N.A.A.C.P. legal office

almost every week in 1946.

One Black Army veteran
was murdered on his front porch

in Taylor County, Georgia.

His offense had been casting a
vote in the Democratic primary.

A week later, 120 miles away,

a Black veteran was kidnapped
by a lynch mob...

along with a friend and their two wives,

one of them reportedly
seven months pregnant.

The four were shot roughly
60 times at close range.

Eyewitness accounts reported
that the lynching party

included local police officers.

In the middle of what
Thurgood Marshall called

that "terrible" season of 1946,

Isaac Woodard walked into
the New York City offices

of N.A.A.C.P. head Walter White.

The 27-year-old South Carolina
native struck White

as polite and handsome,

with the ramrod straight bearing
of a soldier.

"I saw you, Mr. White,

when you visited my outfit
in the Pacific," he said.

"I could see then."

Woodard then sat down and
told the story of his blinding

in a sworn affidavit.

The policeman asked me, was I discharged?

And when I said yes,

that's when he started beating
me with a billy,

hitting me across the top of the head.

After that, I grabbed his billy,
and wrung it out of his hands.

Another policeman came up
and threw his gun on me,

told me to drop the billy or he'd drop me,

so I dropped the billy.

He knocked me unconscious.

He hollered, "Get up!"

When I started to get up,
he started punching me

in the eyes with the end of his billy.

N.A.A.C.P. officials,
they were moved by this,

like everyone was moved
by just the tragedy of it.

In addition, the N.A.A.C.P.
leadership was always

on the lookout for cases of injustice

that they could use
to really dramatize the nature

of the Southern racial system...

for African Americans around the country,

to get them to support
the N.A.A.C.P.'s work,

and for white people
to make them understand

what's really going on.

Once Walter White
gets a hold of Isaac Woodard's story,

he is on fire.

He is looking for ways
to publicize this story

and he's looking for
the biggest platform out there.

How do you do, ladies and gentlemen?

This is Orson Welles.

White and his new press agent reached out

to one of the nation's great dramatists,

the boy wonder of stage and cinema,

31-year-old Orson Welles.

In the summer of 1946,
Welles was hosting a radio show

that broadcast nationally every Sunday.

The N.A.A.C.P. goes to him

and says, "We need your help
to share this story."

The story fascinated him,

particularly the whodunnit quality.

No one knew who this police officer was.

Now it seems the
officer of the law who blinded

the young Negro boy in the
affidavit has not been named.

Till we know more about him, for just now,

we'll call the policeman Officer X.

Officer X, I'm talking to you.

We invite you to luxuriate
in secrecy, it will be brief.

You're going to be uncovered!

Welles came back
to the Woodard story the next week,

and the week after, drawing more
listeners each episode.

But there were holes in the story.

Three weeks into the radio broadcasts,

there were still no real leads
about Woodard's assailant,

or even about the town
where Woodard had been pulled

from the bus.

The N.A.A.C.P. legal team
was getting nervous.

Marshall says,
"We gotta get this right."

We've got our friends
out on a limb on this thing.

Orson Welles hires
private investigators to go

throughout the bus route to
figure out where this happened.

And the N.A.A.C.P.'s
national office has its lawyers

searching these communities

asking does anyone know this story.

Arriving in, unsolicited,
in the national office

is a letter from a Black soldier who says,

"I heard on the radio about the
blinding of Sergeant Woodard.

"I was on the bus.

It was Batesburg."

I have before me wires
and press releases to the effect

that a policeman of Batesburg,

a man by the name of Shull,
has admitted that he was

the police officer
who blinded Isaac Woodard.

Officer X, we know your name now.

Now that we found you out,
we'll never lose you.

You can't get rid of me.

We have an appointment.

The Welles broadcast
had put the story in the headlines,

and a whirlwind began to swirl
around Isaac Woodard.

When word got out that the Army
had denied the young sergeant

full disability benefits...

on the grounds that he was
blinded a few hours

after his discharge...

luminaries from New York's
Black community organized

a benefit concert on his behalf.

Headlined by some of the biggest
names in music,

stars from Billie Holliday
to Woody Guthrie turned up

at Lewisohn Stadium in Harlem to
raise money for "the blind G.I."

Heavyweight champion Joe Louis,
hero of Black America,

stepped forward to co-chair the event.

Joe Louis sent a
limousine to our house in the Bronx.

I was 11 years old.

That excited me.

Seated beside his mother, Isaac Woodard,

a young man from tiny
Winnsboro, South Carolina,

was awestruck to learn
that nearly 20,000 people

had gathered in his honor.

10,000 more were turned away.

The crowd had been drawn
by the all-star performances,

but it was Woodard himself who
turned out to be the headliner.

One reporter noted that applause
lasted for five minutes

after he took the stage.

He spoke in a very
low voice and people had to go be

completely silent to hear him,

but it was a powerful account
of what happened.

I spent three-and-a-half
years in service of my country

and thought I would be treated
as a man when I returned

to civilian life,

but I was mistaken.

If the loss of my sight
will make people in America

get together to prevent what happened to me

from ever happening again
to any other person,

I would be glad.

The benefit concert netted
more than $10,000 for Isaac Woodard...

enough to buy a house, but little else.

One N.A.A.C.P. staffer noted

though Woodard was riding high now,

"in ten years no one
will remember" his name.

The N.A.A.C.P. basically
adopts a plan to make Isaac Woodard

the centerpiece of a campaign
for the promotion

of the civil rights
of all returning veterans.

He goes on a multi-city
nationwide speaking tour

that gathers huge crowds
all across the country.

It's hard to imagine
how many other Black men

would have been as well known
in America in 1946 and 1947

than Isaac Woodard.

So many victims of
Southern violence are not alive.

Their bullet-ridden corpses
are in a grave somewhere,

but he's alive to talk about his story.

My dad told me he remembers
when the mailman would arrive daily,

he would have a huge duffel bag
that he would carry

and the letters would just
pour out onto the floor.

How does Isaac Woodard
negotiate this new world that he's in?

He's blinded, he's got to figure
out how to support himself

and also being called upon to be a symbol,

where he didn't want to be a symbol.

He just was expecting to be
discharged from the Army

and go back to his family.

The blind soldier
fought for me in this war.

The least I can do now is fight for him.

I have eyes.
He hasn't.

I was born a white man.

And until a colored man
is a full citizen, like me,

I haven't the leisure to enjoy
the freedom that colored man

risked his life to maintain for me.

I don't own what I have until
he owns an equal share of it.

Until somebody beats me and blinds me,

I am in his debt.

The Welles broadcast
generated huge attention.

The N.A.A.C.P. built on that
and civil rights groups

around the country were writing
letters demanding

for the prosecution of this police officer

for the beating and blinding
of Sergeant Woodard.

In terms of
getting justice for Isaac Woodard,

it's going to be extremely
difficult, if not impossible.

There are no
prosecutions of white police officers

by the federal government
for excessive force.

They're getting 1,000 to 2,000
complaints a year,

and they're essentially not doing much.

Everybody understood
that Southern state governments

did not protect against violence.

In fact, local officials were
often the purveyors of violence.

So, there'd been calls and calls and calls

on the federal government
to take some kind of action.

But the Department of Justice
had largely been

unwilling to step up to that task.

The Justice Department
had endless explanations

about why it simply
wasn't possible to do this.

You had all white juries,
all white grand juries.

Why are they all white?

Because African Americans
are disenfranchised.

And getting a conviction
against a white police officer

is not realistic.

It's not going to happen in the South.

There's this part of it
that is about treating the South

as though it is some peculiar,
unique, hothouse flower

that has to be handled carefully.

And that, that, that you kind of
didn't try to interfere

with something that was regarded
as kind of cultural.

And this really comes out of
the idea that Southern mores

were sufficiently different,
that it would do you no good

to try to interfere with them.

What the N.A.A.C.P. can do

is try to channel righteous outrage,

try to shine a light on this
incredibly heinous incident

and perhaps go above the head
of local law enforcement

to Washington to prick the
conscience of the president.

And that, perhaps, through
the powers of the presidency,

some change can come to the South.

There'd been a
long tradition of Black leaders

meeting with presidents
of the United States.

But there's a lot of suspicion of Truman.

You know, how liberal is he?

How sympathetic to the
N.A.A.C.P. is he going to be?

Nothing in Truman's background
would lead one to believe

that he would act differently
than the presidents before him.

Civil rights leaders had
good reason to regard Harry Truman

as an unlikely champion of Black Americans.

He had grown up in Independence, Missouri,

a town that still celebrated
its Confederate heritage.

Truman's grandparents on both sides

were rebel partisans and slaveowners.

Harry Truman's
mother thought John Wilkes Booth

was an American hero.

She refused to sleep in the Lincoln bedroom

in the White House.

He grew up in a
household where belief in white supremacy

was simply in the air.

People used racial epithets very casually

and he continued to use them
well into his adult life.

Despite his background,
President Truman was willing

to listen to the concerns
of civil rights advocates.

On September 19, 1946,

Truman invited Walter White
and a delegation

of religious and labor leaders

for a meeting in the Oval Office.

The meeting begins
and the civil rights leaders

are asking the president
to pass legislation

prohibiting lynching in America.

Harry Truman says to the leaders,

"I understand your concerns,

but there's not the will in this
country for new legislation."

Walter White is listening
to this discussion.

And he realizes that
Harry Truman doesn't get it.

He stops the discussion
and says, "Mr. President,

I need to tell you the story of
the blinding of Isaac Woodard."

People like Harry
Truman need to be woken up.

That was part of
the N.A.A.C.P.'s job,

was to wake people up

to injustices they tolerated,

that they ignored,

that they were complicit in,
and to make them see it.

Harry Truman, decades
earlier, after World War I had been

a returning veteran.

A white returning veteran, to be sure,

but the idea that a war veteran

wearing his uniform
could be pulled off a bus

and attacked and beaten
by law enforcement officers,

surprised Truman and enraged him.

Truman became
red-faced, extremely agitated,

jaw clenched, and then turns
to his staff and says,

"My God, I didn't know
it was as terrible as this.

We have got to do something."

The next day,
the president fired off a letter

to his attorney general,
referencing Isaac Woodard

and insisting it would
"require the inauguration

of some sort of policy
to prevent such happenings."

Five days later, at Truman's insistence,

the attorney general
ordered federal prosecutors

in South Carolina to initiate
criminal proceedings

against Police Chief Lynwood Shull.

This is unprecedented

for the president of the United States

to involve himself
in what white Southerners see

as a local matter.

This was a way of life for them.

They thought it was perfectly
normal for a Southern sheriff

to get away with blinding a Black man.

And so the mere fact of the
federal government's attention,

and engagement demonstrated that
someone was watching.

It demonstrated that perhaps
the South would not be treated

as this peculiar region
that we won't touch.

It was very, very powerful.

President Truman's
resolve to hold Chief Shull accountable

was met with predictable resistance,

even by the U.S. attorney
in charge of the case.

It is greeted in South
Carolina with shock, anger, revulsion,

in the white political leadership.

The U.S. attorney
for South Carolina

wanted no part of this case.

The Justice Department makes it very clear,

this is not a matter of debate,

this is an order.

You are to bring this case.

When Isaac Woodard
returned to South Carolina for the trial,

the N.A.A.C.P. dispatched
Franklin Williams,

one of their finest attorneys,
to accompany him.

The N.A.A.C.P.
sends Franklin Williams to travel

with Isaac Woodard for several reasons:

he's blind, he needed somebody
to navigate around,

and also they fundamentally don't trust

the Department of Justice.

Franklin
Williams recognizes that the object

of this entire thing was to make
it almost like a culture war.

It was going to be a Southern way of life

versus these Northern activists
and intruders trying to dictate

their way of life on the South.

Williams offered
plenty of assistance to the prosecution

at their first and only meeting,

less than 24 hours
before the start of the trial.

He had a list of possible witnesses,

including bus passengers
who had seen Lynnwood Shull's

first unprovoked blows to Woodard's head.

He also had at the ready a report

by N.A.A.C.P. investigators
detailing Shull's history

of violence against
the Black citizens in Batesburg.

But the prosecution waved him off.

On the morning of November 5, 1946,

the courtroom in Columbia
was tense and segregated.

Shull's supporters occupied
one section of the gallery,

determined to witness the repudiation

of a federal government gone too far.

A delegation of anxious
Black college students

took up the other half,

hoping to catch the first glimmers

of a sea change in Southern justice.

A hush fell over the room
as Judge J. Waties Waring

called the trial to order.

J. Waties Waring was
an eighth-generation Charlestonian.

His father was a Confederate veteran,

multiple generations
of his family were slaveholders.

He was no advocate for civil rights.

And he, frankly, early on
when he got assigned this case,

he had a lot of doubts
about the appropriateness

of the federal government
to prosecute a police officer.

Judge Waring, like most
in South Carolina's political class,

harbored plenty of suspicions

about federal intervention in this case.

Chiefly, that President Truman
was motivated more

by the coming midterms
than a concern for justice.

But Waring's skepticism began unraveling

as soon as Isaac Woodard rose to testify.

He's wearing a brown suit.

He has sunglasses.

He has to be guided to the witness chair

by court personnel.

And he then begins
on the direct examination

to describe what happened,

and the story is just completely credible.

Waring knows it's true.

Waring is face-to-face
with this man who bears on his body

the scars of Southern racism.

He cannot look away from this

walking, talking tragedy of injustice.

The crux of the case is
whether excessive and unnecessary force

was used in regard to Isaac Woodard.

The police chief claimed

"I only hit him once, I don't
know how he got blinded."

But how do you crush the globes
of both eyes with one strike?

The government finished presenting its case

against Shull after just an hour
and 25 minutes.

The prosecutors had not called
witnesses who had seen

the attack unfold,
or presented any evidence

about Chief Shull's pattern
of violence against

the Black citizens of Batesburg.

As the prosecution rested,

Franklin Williams sat in the courtroom,

furiously scrawling notes.

It was going to be a difficult case to win,

but even given that,

the Department of Justice acted
with incompetence.

They failed to call key witnesses.

They let the defense lawyers
examine the jury pool

and asked them whether
they'd been members...

all these white people...

asked them whether they'd been
members of the N.A.A.C.P.

I mean they never asked them
whether they'd been members

of the Ku Klux Klan.

They were just sort of
incompetent from top to bottom.

There's a reason for that.

This is not a case
that the Justice Department

wanted to bring.

And at trial, they showed that
their heart was not in it.

Judge Waring was
horrified that he was made part

of this travesty.

He sends the jury out to deliberate,

and he tells his assistant
United States marshal,

"I'll be back in a few minutes.

And the bewildered marshal says,
"Your Honor, you can't leave.

This jury is going to be back
in five minutes."

He says, "They're not
coming back in five minutes

because I won't be here."

He was not going to allow a jury
to do a five-minute verdict,

which he thought would just be the capstone

of a great injustice.

That part he controlled,

and he made them sit in that
room and stew in their juices,

until he got back.

Judge Waring walks down Main
Street to the state capitol,

and when he comes back 25 minutes later,

they're banging on that door.

They've been banging on it for 20 minutes

and they come out and they announce

the acquittal of Lynwood Shull.

An exhausted Isaac
Woodard had already retreated

back to his hotel
when he received the news.

He wept, then collected himself,

and stepped outside to face reporters.

"I'm not mad at anybody," he told them.

"I just feel bad.

"That's all.

I just feel bad."

Inside the courthouse,
Judge Waring hastily packed up

his briefcase and then hurried
to meet his wife, Elizabeth,

whom he found badly shaken.

She had attended the trial.

And she found

the facts of the case
astonishing, cruel, vicious.

When the jury came back
and acquitted Shull,

no one noticed that she slipped

out of the back of the courtroom in tears.

She was profoundly
moved by the testimony of Isaac Woodard,

about what had happened to him
at the hands of Chief Shull.

She said she had never seen,
never appreciated,

never understood that these
sorts of things could happen.

Elizabeth Avery Waring
was from a well-to-do family in Michigan

and had only come South late in life.

Like Waties, she had never paid
much attention

to the racial caste system
in and around Charleston.

Charleston, a gracious old city,

where memories and traditions
live and thrive

in a congenial air.

Everywhere is an old time,
almost an old world,

charm and quaintness.

And everywhere, of course, the Negroes.

The real Negro quarters
in Charleston may not boast

classic colonial architecture
in all its flower,

but it has a quaintness all its own.

The Southern system
of segregation wasn't just

some benign system that

whites and Blacks acceded to
and everybody was happy.

It was a violent system.

It was based on violence.

If you got out of line,

there was violent repression,

and Woodard exemplified that.

You know, for someone like Waring,

he'd spent his whole life ignoring that.

"I couldn't take it,
at first," Waring would later admit.

"I used to say it couldn't be true.

"You grow up in it
and the moss gets in your eyes.

"You learn to rationalize away
the evil and filth

and you see magnolias instead."

There is a willful blindness, frankly,

among most white people
about the truth of racism

and white supremacy in this country.

There is some ignorance because, of course,

we live very segregated lives,

but it's right to say how could
he possibly not have known?

He could not have known because

to be a comfortable middle-class
white person in this country

generally involves
refusing to see what is hiding

in plain sight.

The trial shattered
their illusion about the benign nature

of Southern life.

And, once shattered, where do they go?

There was just no tolerance
in Southern society of that day,

to any honest discussion about race.

Any questioning of Jim Crow was
viewed by the segregationists

as an existential threat.

There was no course on this.

They certainly didn't know of
anyone in Charleston

that could help them better understand,

so the two of them begin a series of study

on race relations in the South.

They take in books
every night, they read them,

and then they have sessions
after dinner where they ask

each other questions, and they basically

create their own personal seminar to try

to understand racism in America.

The Warings started
with two groundbreaking new works

that examined the origins and
the impact of white supremacy

in the South: W.J. Cash's book,
"The Mind of the South,"

and Gunnar Myrdal's
"An American Dilemma."

Both books destroyed the comforting story

white Southerners liked to tell themselves:

that slavery and Jim Crow had always been

paternal institutions

and that the "Negro" had long
lived under the protections

of a benevolent master race.

Both made plain that white
moderates, like Waring himself,

were complicit in this racist,
violent system.

These are important
books, they're complicated books,

they're challenging books.

Judge Waring described them
as tough medicine for him.

They rode through different neighborhoods

and began to see the different ways

that white Charlestonians
and Black Charlestonians

experienced life in the city.

As they began to read,

and understand, and question

all that they've thought about
race in the past,

it becomes clear to both of them
that the road ahead

is going to be a rocky road,

but that this just may be the road

that they are uniquely prepared to follow.

Looking askance at Charleston
society wasn't such a great leap

for either of the Warings,

who had been increasingly
feeling like outsiders

in their own hometown.

Just the previous year,
Judge Waring had scandalized

his friends and neighbors
by abruptly announcing

to his first wife, Annie,
that he'd fallen in love

with their bridge partner, Elizabeth.

Divorce was not only
frowned upon in South Carolina;

it was illegal.

But Waring devised a plan
to send Annie to Florida,

where she could legally
petition for divorce.

A week after the dissolution
of his marriage to Annie,

Waties and Elizabeth were wed.

Their friends in Charleston...

we're talking about
a couple hundred people,

the sort of social set in Charleston...

they blame Elizabeth
for the breakup of the marriage.

Elizabeth, a
Northerner now on her third marriage,

was an easy target
for Charleston's society dames,

who branded her a "floozie"
and told their children,

"You may be polite if the new
Mrs. Waring speaks to you,

but never address her."

The judge noted that even
his oldest friends

crossed the street to avoid him.

They clearly
were surprised by their treatment

because they both had been
very engaged in the social life

in Charleston.

And having been read out of
Charleston's high society,

he was prepared to look
more critically at the world

in which he had previously lived
and accepted unquestionably.

By the end of 1946,

a racial reckoning in the
United States seemed inevitable.

Like the Warings,
President Harry Truman felt

called to respond to the
blinding of Isaac Woodard

and the mockery it made of the principles

America had just defended
in a long and brutal war.

But political forces had left
Truman with limited power

to take action against white supremacy.

On the same day Woodard's
assailant walked free,

November 5, 1946,

the president absorbed
a stunning repudiation

at the polls.

Democrats lost both the House
and the Senate

for the first time in a generation.

Forcing the question of
civil rights, Truman understood,

was likely to weaken the party further.

Harry Truman
has to deal with political realities,

and the realities are
that the Democratic Party

is an unwieldy coalition

including white Southerners,
who are staunchly segregationist

and supporters of white supremacy,

and this new and growing group
of African-American voters.

Truman knows that any move
that he makes on civil rights,

he risks alienating
Southern white Democrats.

But at this moment,

when he sees a representative
of the United States,

a soldier in uniform,
Isaac Woodard, who is maimed...

it sounds simplistic, but I think something

just kind of clicks in him,
that this simply cannot stand.

We hold ourselves up
as the beacon of democracy.

We hold ourselves up as moral leaders.

Moral leaders do not blind
their own servicemen.

On December 5, 1946,

one month after the acquittal
of Isaac Woodard's attacker,

Harry Truman signed
an executive order establishing

the President's Committee on Civil Rights.

The president charged his new
committee with laying bare

hard truths about the
intimidation and violence used

to enforce racial segregation,

and with recommending concrete
measures to safeguard

the rights of every American,

regardless of race, creed, or religion.

Harry Truman is a politician,

and political considerations
are never far from

the ambit of a politician's decisions.

But there were certain actions
he took which could not be

explained on the basis
of political advantage.

He appointed the President's
Committee on Civil Rights,

I think, probably more for moral
reasons than anything else.

He saw injustice.

He was outraged by it.

He thought that he should do something.

And given Truman's background,
it undoubtedly was a surprise

to civil rights advocates.

Truman said many
things that were absolutely racist

and indefensible.

They were what we would consider
of the time for a white man

from Missouri.

But Truman saw no contradiction
between these personal views

and what he saw as
America's legal obligations

to its citizens.

That it does not matter
what you personally feel,

whom you would have to your home
for dinner,

or whom you would have
a glass of bourbon with

at the end of the day.

What matters is that
these people have rights

under the constitution

because this is
the United States of America.

♪ Lift every voice and sing ♪

♪ Lift every voice and sing ♪

On a brutally hot,
humid day at the end of June 1947,

an audience of 10,000...
many of them African American...

gathered on the Capitol Mall
in a state of high anticipation.

Harry Truman was about to do

what no United States president
had ever done.

He had accepted an invitation
from Walter White

to address the annual convention
of the N.A.A.C.P.

at the base of the Lincoln Memorial.

The N.A.A.C.P.
was considered a radical organization.

Some Southern politicians considered it

a Communist front organization.

I mean, if you were a member

of the N.A.A.C.P. in the South
and you were a school teacher,

you were probably going to get fired.

And to have Harry Truman
go in front and speak

to the N.A.A.C.P.
was a remarkable moment.

He had multiple drafts of the speech done.

He was editing it himself,

and he wrote a letter
to his sister, and he says,

"I'm getting ready to give a speech

that Mama isn't going to like."

Mrs. Roosevelt,

Senator Morris,

distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen,

I should like to talk to you briefly

about civil rights and human freedom.

It is more important today

than ever before to ensure

that all Americans enjoy these rights.

When I say all Americans,
I mean all Americans.

The theme can be summed up in two words

that Truman used several times
in the speech,

which was only 12 minutes long.

And those two words are
"all Americans."

He kept repeating the phrase
"all Americans."

There is no justifiable reason
for discrimination

because of ancestry,
or religion, or race, or color.

We cannot any longer await
the growth of a will to action

in the slowest state
or the most backward community.

Our national government must show the way.

It was a stunning speech.

And when he sat down, Walter
White, sitting next to him,

is in disbelief.

And he said,
"Mr. President, I just...

I can't believe
what you just said."

And he said, "Walter,
I meant every word of it."

Judge J. Waties Waring
had become increasingly convinced

that a bitter fight over racism
was coming to South Carolina.

He would later remember that he
was faced with two choices:

"Either you were going to be governed by

"the white supremacy doctrine
and just shut your eyes

"and bowl this thing through,

"or you were going to be a federal judge

and decide the law...
that was the issue."

A judge
doesn't normally go and pick his cases,

but Judge Waring tells his clerk,

"Keep an eye open
for new civil rights cases.

Let me know when they have
occurred."

That evening, Waties told Elizabeth about

an explosive new case he was considering

for his trial docket.

The case, Elmore v. Rice,

had originated when George Elmore,

a prosperous Black businessman,

had been told by the
South Carolina Democratic Party

that he was ineligible to vote
in the upcoming primary.

Denying Elmore the right to vote
was in direct violation

of the Supreme Court's 1944 ruling

in Smith v. Allwright, which
banned the whites-only primary.

When you win a
Supreme Court case like that,

what is supposed to happen
is everyone is supposed

to comply with the judgment of the court.

South Carolina doesn't.

The South Carolina Democratic
Party says, "Well,

"you know, that may be what
the Supreme Court said

"but they must've been talking to Texas.

They couldn't have been
talking to us."

South Carolina's segregationist
Democrats adopted the strategy

of willful ignorance for a reason.

The Black population in
South Carolina stood

at roughly 40 percent,
second only to Mississippi's.

And that was a lot of potential voters

who might start demanding equal rights.

So even though the Supreme Court
had left no wiggle room

in striking down the all-white primary,

the white power structure in the
state executed a spectacular

end run around the ruling.

It repealed every
law on the books relating to the primary

and then claimed the 14th Amendment

did not apply to the Democratic
Party of South Carolina,

because there was no state action.

This was a private club having an election.

Voting is really the
lynchpin of the rest of the system.

Whites have to be in power

to control the mechanisms of the state.

To do that, they have
to suppress Black voting.

So, Elmore, for Judge Waring,

is going to involve a direct
challenge to the system

of Southern repression,
domination, and segregation,

unlike almost all of the cases
that came before it.

So Judge Waring said to Elizabeth,

"I need to tell you I've taken this case.

"And we, up to this point,

"we've been doing this kind
of privately, we haven't

"really been discussing
our views with others.

"But if I rule for Mr. Elmore,

our lives will never
be the same."

Elizabeth looked at him
and said, "You go for it.

"It's the right thing to do.

I will be with you
every step of the way."

In June of 1947,
J. Waties Waring headed back

to the same courtroom where
Isaac Woodard's testimony

had so shaken him
just eight months earlier,

this time to hear
Elmore v. Rice.

Representing George Elmore were
the N.A.A.C.P.'s top attorneys,

Thurgood Marshall and Robert Carter.

In court, attorneys for
the South Carolina Democrats

expounded their novel argument:

the Democratic Party was a private club,

and enjoyed the right
to restrict its membership

as it saw fit.

The federal court had no more business

directing their elections
than it did directing

a ladies sewing circle.

Judge Waring was not impressed.

If you are a judge, and a
judge who's now awakening

to the reality of white supremacy

and racial discrimination,
as Waties Waring is,

you understand that this case
actually constitutes

an opportunity to talk about the
role of the Supreme Court

in relationship to Southern states,

the way in which political power
is harnessed and controlled

as part of white supremacy,
and as a way to talk about

what the power of local judges are

to stop white supremacists in the South

from carrying out their plans.

Waring issued his ruling on July 12, 1947,

just two weeks after Truman's appearance

at the national convention
of the N.A.A.C.P.

He found for Elmore, quoting
directly from Truman's speech:

"We can no longer afford the
luxury of a leisurely attack

"upon prejudice and discrimination.

"We cannot, any longer, await
the growth of a will to action

in the slowest state
or the most backward community."

He says it's a joke.

It's a ridiculous argument.

Private clubs do not elect the
president of the United States.

And he finished the order
with a resounding call

for his South Carolinians.

He said, "It is time

"for South Carolina to rejoin the union

and to adopt the American way
of conducting elections."

There was no effort to uphold

the nobility of Southern white
supremacy, right?

He's calling it out for what it is.

For Judge Waring,
standing as a figure alone

in a deeply entrenched Southern community,

it is his farewell.

It's his farewell to the society
in which he grew up

and it marks an articulation
of his decision to go it alone

with his wife in that community.

The
Southern revolt against President Truman

reaches its climax at Birmingham,

under the States' Rights banner.

More than 6,000 flock
to the rump convention

to select the presidential ticket.

Thirteen Southern states are represented

in the uproarious session,
which precedes the nomination

of Governors Thurmond of South Carolina,

and Fielding Wright of Mississippi

as party standard bearers.

By the time the
next election season arrived,

a huge swath of Southern
Democrats had had enough

of what they called
"federal intrusion."

Segregationists had held sway
in local politics for decades,

and they didn't intend to be pushed around

by the United States Supreme Court,

or federal judges
like J. Waties Waring,

or even the president.

Good-bye Harry, good-bye Harry!

At the 1948 Democratic National Convention,

Dixiecrats walk out
over the civil rights plank

prompted by President Truman's
actions, originally,

and Strom Thurmond runs
as a presidential candidate

on behalf of the Dixiecrats.

In the words of John Paul Jones,
"We have just begun to fight!"

There are
thousands of white people in attendance.

The hall is decorated in
red, white, and blue bunting.

It is festooned with Confederate flags.

People are holding aloft
pictures of Robert E. Lee.

There's no question as to sort of

the animating spirit of this group,

which is to return the South to the past,

to maintain the racial status quo,

to maintain white supremacy.

It's another effort on the part
of this president

to dominate the country by force
and to put into effect

these uncalled for and these
damnable proposals

he has recommended under the
guise of so-called civil rights.

And I tell you the American
people, from one side

or the other, had better wake up
and oppose such a program.

And if they don't, the next thing will be

a totalitarian state
in these United States.

The Dixiecrats,

their goal is to be a spoiler,

to deny either major party a majority

of electoral college votes,

thereby throwing the election

into the House of
Representatives, where they can

use their power to win
concessions on civil rights.

Truman didn't blink, and he didn't retreat.

Nine days after the Dixiecrat revolt,

he gave the States Righters a little primer

in presidential power.

Truman signed an executive order

desegregating the federal workforce

and, more shockingly,

the entirety of the
United States Armed Forces.

Desegregating the military is something

that Truman could do with a
stroke of a pen.

He does it because he's already seen

the worst that Southerners are
going to do, right?

They've already staged a revolt,
so why not go all in?

A lifelong friend
writes him a letter and says, "Harry,

"get off this civil rights thing.

If you don't do it, you're going
to lose the election."

Truman writes him a letter back

and says,
"You don't know what I know."

He then tells him the story of
the blinding of Isaac Woodard.

He mentions these other atrocities as well,

and he says, "If I lose the
election over this issue,

it will have been for
a good cause."

In that way, President Truman
and Judge Waring are the same.

Every instinct of political
survival should have told

both of them to keep their hand
off the hotspot of the oven.

Both of them went to the hotspot.

As the 1948 primary approached,

South Carolina Democrats
were brazenly evading

Waring's decision in Elmore...

allowing Black South Carolinians
to register to vote

only after they signed an oath

declaring their opposition
to racial integration.

Waring summoned nearly a hundred officials

of the South Carolina Democratic Party

and ordered them to register Black citizens

without swearing any oath.

He tells them that a federal judge

faced with contempt has two choices.

He can impose a fine or a prison sentence.

He says, "If you violate my order again,

there will be no fines."

The message that he was prepared
to jail white men

for depriving African Americans
the right to vote

hit the white establishment
like a thunderbolt.

Threatening letters
began arriving at the courthouse

and at Judge Waring's home soon after.

Obscene calls came into
his phone line so frequently

that he was forced to disconnect
his service.

White Southerners, as much as they despise

African Americans and despise civil rights,

they often level the most venom
against people

they think are traitors,
and that would be Waring.

The Warings lived their lives more and more

on their own terms.

Neighbors were particularly scandalized

by the unlikely visitors
that were seen calling

at 61 Meeting Street.

They became friendly with a number

of African-American activists.

Septima Clark, who was a fiery
advocate for civil rights,

was very close with the Warings,

was a frequent visitor
in the house at a time

that Black people only entered

the homes of white people
through the back door as maids.

Ruby Cornwell was the matriarch
of the civil rights community

in Charleston.

She was a frequent visitor
and a close friend.

But perhaps the most interesting
relationship

that Judge Waring develops

is a close, personal
relationship with Walter White...

then the most important civil
rights leader in America.

The Warings just got to the point,

they didn't care what other people thought.

There's a very famous photograph
of the Warings,

featured in "Collier's" magazine,

that showed a dinner party
at the Warings' house.

The article was titled,
"The Lonesomest Man in Town,"

but he didn't look that lonesome.

He had lots of friends at his dinner table.

The only notable part was they
were all African American.

They're socializing, they're laughing,

they're enjoying each other's
friendship as equals,

and that was terrifying
to white Charlestonians.

Elizabeth's willingness
to flout the social conventions

of Charleston society and her
candor about Southern racism

brought unprecedented national attention

to the wife of a sitting federal judge.

She found her voice.

And she put white Charlestonians

on notice that that was going
to be a voice that

she would not hesitate to use.

She was invited,

one of the first women,
to come on "Meet the Press."

Tonight from Washington,
D.C., this is J. Waties Waring

of Charleston, South Carolina,

wife of federal Judge Waring
who stirred up a hornet's nest

in the South by her vigorous
attack on white supremacy.

Mrs. Waring, you charged in your speech

before the YWCA group in Charleston

that the whites down here are a sick,

confused, and decadent people,

and that like all decadent
people, they are full of pride

and complacency, introverted,
morally weak, and low.

What brought you to this
drastic conclusion?

Living there and observing them,

a very deep study of the subject.

Any people who enslave the minds
and bodies of another people

are bound to destroy their own souls.

In ordinary circumstances,

the spouse of a judge would
not do what she did.

But given the depth of the problem,

the importance that somebody speak out,

she felt as though she should.

Are you crusading
only for the Negro's civil rights,

such as the freedom to vote,
freedom of safety of his person,

and freedom from lynching,
and so forth, or are you

for social integration,
is that what you want, too?

I want the whole thing...
I want him to go through the same door,

and so does the judge... I want
him to be an equal citizen.

Reaction in South
Carolina was swift and predictable.

State legislators appropriated $10,000

to fund impeachment of the judge,

then resolved to purchase railroad tickets

for the Warings, anywhere they desired,

as long as it was out of the
state with no return.

Two men were seen burning a
Ku Klux Klan cross

in the Warings' back garden.

And on a quiet evening,

while the Warings were home playing canasta

in their drawing room, three shots rang out

in front of their home.

Their home is right on the street

and they're inside

and suddenly two big bricks
come through the window.

They don't know if people are
coming through the window

and through the doors next.

But they're petrified.

They retreat to their dining room

where they're hiding behind a wall,

believing that they are under fire.

And within days, the
United States Attorney General

provided 24-hour
U.S. Marshal protection...

literally, marshals sleeping out
in front of his house...

throughout the rest of his service

as a United States district judge.

No federal judge had ever faced
such an attack.

The judge, 70
years old and under constant siege,

understood his days on the bench
were numbered.

He confided in Elizabeth

that he meant to do one
big thing before he retired.

With her support, he fixed his sights

on destroying the precedent that
had underpinned legalized racism

in the South for more than 50 years:

the strange doctrine of
"separate but equal."

They are disgusted by the people

who have been their friends
and who have sat idly by

and benefited from this oppressive system.

And they simply can't take it anymore.

And he is now in this position

where he can do something about it.

What the record now shows us,

at the time in which the most
intense pressure

was being put on Judge Waring,

he was making the plans of what
would become

the Briggs v. Elliott dissent...
the case that changes America.

This is South Carolina...

Summerton, South Carolina...

a country crossroads in the rich soil,

isolated in time and space,

and given to old ways...
but not always uncritically.

Here, perhaps more than
elsewhere in the United States,

the racial patterns, the social patterns,

the economic patterns
are all the same pattern.

Briggs v. Elliott...

the case that would set in motion

the demise of legalized segregation...

grew from the unlikeliest soil
in the nation.

Clarendon County, just 90-odd miles

from where Isaac Woodard had been beaten,

was a place well known to Judge Waring.

"It's in what we call the Low Country,"

he said of Clarendon.

"Swamp lands and rivers.

"One of the most backward
counties of the state.

"The Negro schools were just
tumbledown, dirty shacks

with horrible outdoor
toilet facilities."

I lived in Summerton
and I cursed the day I was born

and had to live there.

And I vowed that when I got grown,

I'd never see that damn place again.

They have
talked about us as being subhuman.

I guess from generation to generation,

they couldn't accept the fact
that I'm human just like them,

just like them.

Most of the schools

operated for three to four
months out of the year.

And the reason for that was

these kids need to be in, in the fields

plowing cotton, or whatever.

So we can't have
school when they need to work

to get our cotton out of the fields.

Some of the kids in my class didn't show up

till around Thanksgiving.

Instead of being in school,

they was out working the farm.

Come early April, these kids
are out of the school,

going back to the farm to work.

And the system really didn't care.

It was not meant for us as
Black folks, but two things:

go in somebody's kitchen,
or go in somebody's fields.

That happened to us
a hundred years or more.

That's what was geared for us to do.

They didn't expect no more from you.

In 1947, local parents in Clarendon County

decided to do something about the problem

of simply getting their children to school.

There was a fleet of buses

for the white children in the county...

None for the Black children.

Some of the
Black children in their community

have to walk nine miles to school.

They have to ford a river.

A group of
Summerton parents were able to raise

several hundred dollars
to buy a used school bus,

but the bus broke down constantly.

So the parents turned
to the Reverend J.A. DeLaine,

a principal and minister
with ties to the N.A.A.C.P.

He suggested, "We'll
go in and we'll talk to the superintendent

"of schools about getting funds
for gas money, repair the bus,

and pay a salary
to who drives the bus."

It was turned down.

"Ain't got no money
for you niggers."

Literally, is what they...
what he was told.

It was told that Black
folks didn't pay enough taxes.

You couldn't even vote.

So there was no Black folks on
the school board to direct

and to address the issues that was at hand.

So what power do you have?

My father then
said, "Well, you know, let's file a suit."

I want to talk with Thurgood Marshall.

Thurgood Marshall, the 40-year-old chief

of the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense
Fund,

reluctantly answered the summons
from Clarendon County.

All through the 1940s, Marshall
had been making these trips

from New York into the heart
of the Jim Crow South.

He had been belittled by judges
and opposing counsel

who didn't think he could be an attorney,

threatened with violence,
and nearly lynched.

White Americans
who want to maintain segregation

recognize that Thurgood Marshall
and his legal team are becoming

very effective at chipping
away at that status quo.

And that is why his life is in
danger whenever he travels,

particularly when he travels in the South.

They would have to move him

around from house to house at night

during a trial because the Klan
was after him,

and they didn't want these Night Riders

to find out where Marshall was.

He was threatened constantly,
his life was always in danger...

and he was terrified, too.

But he also knew that it was important

for the African American communities

in those Jim Crow balconies

to look down and see an African American

who was not a defendant, who was in a suit,

who was arguing the law with white men.

It was often an electric experience

for local African American
communities to see

Thurgood Marshall come to town
because he would do something

that nobody had ever seen before,

which was to address white
people and to make them answer

and state reasons for what they were doing,

and to sometimes call them liars.

Marshall leveled with the Reverend DeLaine

and the parents of Clarendon County.

If the N.A.A.C.P. was going to
take on their case,

it was going to be about more
than a school bus.

He wanted to sue for total
equality with the white schools.

Facilities, teacher salaries,
textbooks, buses...

every resource the white schools had,

they would demand in equal
measure for the Black schools.

Marshall explained he wouldn't
even consider taking the case

until he had 20 reliable,
credible plaintiffs,

people who would not cower in
the face of certain intimidation

from the white supremacists
who ruled Clarendon County.

More than 20 Black citizens
agreed to sign on.

On November 17, 1950,

Thurgood Marshall hurried along
Charleston's

palmetto-lined streets for a
pre-trial hearing

with Judge Waring,

unaware that the judge had been
closely following

events in Summerton.

Neither man harbored any doubts

about the strength of Marshall's case:

The N.A.A.C.P. was clearly
poised to win equal facilities

for the Black children of Clarendon County.

The schools for white
children were generally the best schools

that the tax base
could establish and support.

The schools for Black children,

even in some middle class school districts,

mocked the very notion of being schools.

They were visibly unequal to the naked eye.

One need not even step inside

to see how unequal they were.

When Marshall arrives at the courthouse,

he is told by court personnel,

Judge Waring wants to see you
in his chambers.

Lawyers call this ex-parte
communication... it happened.

Judge Waring says to Marshall,

"I don't want to try any more
equalization cases.

Bring me a frontal challenge
to segregation."

Thurgood Marshall
is absolutely floored when Waring

essentially tells him, "Look,
I need you to make this case,

get rid of segregation
altogether."

He basically tells Marshall,

"Look, you need to go
for broke here."

Thurgood Marshall
had dedicated much of his life

to overturning legalized segregation.

But he was playing the long game,

executing a strategy
he had helped to devise

15 years earlier.

Segregation had been sanctioned

by an 1896 Supreme Court decision

in a case called
Plessy v. Ferguson.

Homer Plessy, a Black man from New Orleans,

had challenged the segregated
accommodations

of Louisiana's railroads and lost 8-1.

Plessy v. Ferguson

came to be seen as symbolic of the idea of

separate but equal,

that segregation was not unconstitutional

as long as Blacks and whites
were given equal facilities.

The
N.A.A.C.P. had adopted this strategy,

which is basically turning
Plessy v. Ferguson on its head.

It's a kind of sailing west to arrive east.

Rather than argue against the
scourge of Plessy,

they argued for the fulfillment
of Plessy...

that the constitution
is not being satisfied,

not because the facilities are segregated,

but because they're unequal.

They were winning cases,

but the strategy had controversy
because every time

you use Plessy to support your theory,

you were driving another nail

into the inferior legal status
of African Americans.

The question that faced Marshall was,

when do we move away from the
equalization strategy

and begin to argue that separate but equal

is unconstitutional?

And Marshall was rightly
cautious about when and where

to make that claim,

because if he chose the wrong case

and it went to the Supreme Court,

the worst thing that could
happen for Black Americans

across the country would be for
the Supreme Court

to ratify Plessy v. Ferguson...
to confirm it in a new age

and say, "Yes, this is still
the law of the land

and it satisfies the
constitution."

What Judge Waring
was pushing him to do was very risky.

If you launched a concerted
effort to overturn Plessy

and failed, your years of all
that work would have been thrown

on the trash heap of history.

Thurgood Marshall says,
"Judge, it's on our agenda.

"It's just not tonight,
this is not the time.

This is not the place. ”

What he wasn't saying explicitly was,

this is the last place in
the world we're going to try

to desegregate the schools.

This is down the end of the
road, not the beginning.

Judge Waring said, "This is the time.

"This is the case.

"You're gonna be challenging
the constitutionality

"of a state law.

"You're going to lose,

but you'll plant the case
directly and automatically

"onto the docket of the U.S.
Supreme Court.

And he said, "Thurgood,
that's where you want to be."

At Waring's
urging, Marshall petitioned the court

to dismiss the current case
and bring a new suit,

one alleging that segregation

in South Carolina's public
schools was unconstitutional.

Marshall and his team spent the
next month preparing to refile.

But they also needed approval

from the plaintiffs to move ahead.

Marshall was always
very powerfully conscious

of the risks being taken by plaintiffs.

And if you knew anything about
Clarendon County in that period,

you knew that the Briggs
and others who stood up

to the system in that
jurisdiction were going

to have hell to pay.

The week before Christmas, 1950,

dozens of parents, students,
and teachers filed into

St. Mark A.M.E. Church
in Summerton,

ready to hear an update on their
case from Robert Carter,

Marshall's key deputy.

The place was packed to the rafters.

Mr. Carter explained that

the N.A.A.C.P. thought it was
time to attack segregation,

root and branch,

but that anyone who was a
plaintiff in the case

needed to understand they could
experience severe retaliation.

He said, "Mr. Marshall
wants you to know that.

You can withdraw."

That was made clear to the petitioners...

if you think you're experiencing
retribution now,

if this case come from here,

there's gonna probably be more
reprisals that will come

and don't know what form it would take.

This was no great
revelation to the Reverend DeLaine,

or to the Navy veteran Harry Briggs,

whose name was on the legal filing

simply because he was first up
in the alphabet.

Or to any of the other petitioners

who had signed onto the original lawsuit.

What Marshall had warned about
nearly two years earlier

had come to pass.

Did your husband sign this petition?

Yes, he did sign the petition.

What happened to him after that?

Right after he signed the
petition, he told him that,

unless he take his name off it,
he would lose his job.

On Christmas Eve,
they gave him a carton of cigarettes

and said we got somebody to replace you.

Then money dries up.

Couldn't get work.

He took a pseudonym to get paid.

Because they wasn't gonna hire
Harry Briggs in the county.

What did you tell him?

Well, I told I him we was...
we only doing it

for the betterment of the children.

Mm-hmm. Not only our children,

but all of the children.

There were a lot of evictions.

My father was threatened.

The Black men in town had formed
themselves into a cadre

guarding our house at night with guns.

Reverend Delaine, he had his home burned,

with volunteer firemen standing out front

refusing to provide service.

They did that to send a message, you know.

And when his house caught
on fire, we thought

ours would be next.

They have children, they have families.

They have responsibilities,

and they have to think about all that.

You know, "If I lose my farm,
what happens next?

"Maybe, I'll be killed.

"And also, maybe,

"I'm also the breadwinner of my family.

"It's not just that I'm going to be killed,

my family is going to be
destitute."

Now here was Robert
Carter, who didn't have to stay behind

and live in Clarendon County...

asking these parents to be the
first wave of a frontal attack

on the most jagged ramparts of segregation.

There was a pregnant silence

when Carter finished his presentation.

And then
an old man in the back of the church

raised his hand and he said, "We
wondered how long it would take

you lawyers to get there."

They were ready.

When you had enough, you just had enough.

I mean, you just can't take it anymore.

Where can you go?
You can't back up.

You just can't, you gotta go forward.

And that was their mindset.

Not any of those families backed down.

Clarendon County is
almost like the Isaac Woodard case.

The starkness of the facts,
the depth of the racism

goes to the very heart of the unfairness

and the ugliness of white supremacy.

And in that case for Marshall,

it's going right into the eye of the storm.

Marshall didn't
expect to win Briggs v. Elliott

in the federal court of South Carolina.

But his team did need to build
a record of evidence,

one that would give the United
States Supreme Court

a solid rationale for ending
segregation in public schools...

and essentially burying its own
"separate but equal" precedent.

Marshall has to show, well,

no matter what you did with resources,

just the mere fact of a statute

that requires segregation
is unconstitutional.

Why is it unconstitutional?

Well, for us, it would be easy.

This is just subordination of Black people.

But for them, it was hard because

they didn't question it.

They weren't thinking that segregation

was harmful to Black people.

He said, if you were
in an automobile accident,

I would have to show
how the accident injured you.

Here in this case,

he has to show how segregation
has injured his clients.

What harm has it caused?

Enter 37-year-old psychologist
Kenneth Clark

and his now-famous dolls.

Kenneth and Mamie
Clark... the first Black Americans

to earn PhDs in psychology
from Columbia University...

had recently begun conducting
a series of research experiments

to determine the effect of
segregation on Black children.

The tools of the Clarks' experimental trade

were breathtakingly simple:

a suitcase full of dolls,

four of them gender neutral,

identical in every way except
for skin color.

Two were white, and two were brown.

Doctor Kenneth Clark explained
their extraordinary findings

to N.A.A.C.P. attorney
Robert Carter,

who lobbied his colleagues
to make the Clarks' research

central to their legal strategy.

There's a great
deal of debate around the table

at Legal Defense headquarters
in New York City.

They are thinking, what are we
going to do with

what they call
"These damn dolls?"

Marshall sits at the end of the
table, says very little,

and just smokes, and smokes, and smokes,

as the attorneys hash it out, hash it out,

until finally Marshall says,
"I have to show injury.

"The dolls are how I'm going to show

"the injury to the children.

We're taking the dolls with us
to South Carolina."

By daybreak on May 28, 1951,

a caravan of cars filled with
parents, teachers, and children

was well on its way from
Summerton to Charleston,

where they were finally going
to get their day in court.

As they pulled up to the
federal courthouse,

the citizens of Clarendon County
were awed to discover

they were not the only ones
who had made the journey.

From across the state,

African Americans got up early
in the morning

and drove to Charleston.

And by the time the sun rose that morning,

they were lined up
as far as the eye could see.

Out the sidewalk, around the corner.

And these folks stood out there
in hot, hot May weather.

You ever been to South Carolina in May?

It is hot... sticky hot.

Thurgood Marshall,
arriving that morning for the trial,

was amazed... he had never
seen such a crowd.

And he turned to Robert Carter

and said, "Bob, it's all over."

Carter, you know, his young associate said,

"Thurgood, what are you talking
about?"

He said, "They're not scared
anymore."

For Marshall to see
the throngs, the crowds,

coming out for the first day of trial

showed him that something had
shifted in the South.

They're not afraid anymore to
fight for their full citizenship

and to make the statement of
how important this is to them.

With the courtroom packed beyond capacity

that hot spring morning,
Marshall began arguing his case

before a panel of three federal judges,

one of whom was Judge Waties Waring.

He sparred with defense witnesses

from the school district
and presented his own

expert testimonies on the
egregious disparities

between the county's Black
and white schools.

Marshall did not stop there.

He proceeded to show the court
that the damage

to the Black children in Clarendon County

was real and quantifiable.

His key witness
took the stand that afternoon.

Dr. Kenneth Clark described
for the court

the doll experiments he and his
wife had conducted on hundreds

of Black schoolchildren across the country,

asking them to evaluate and compare

the virtues of the black and white dolls.

Kenneth and Mamie
Clark conduct these studies

over a period of months and it
traumatizes them

to have to do this over and over
again and get

the same answers over and over again

from different children,

attending different schools

in different states.

Without fail, the Black children
preferred the white doll.

Not only does the
N.A.A.C.P. have all of the information

it needs on the brick and mortar issues,

now they have evidence that said,

"Look, this is inherently damaging

"to Black children, right?

"And this is a stigma, and this is a damage

from which they will
never recover."

The trial was shorter
than anticipated... just two days.

Marshall had given it his best shot.

As he joined the throngs
streaming out of the courtroom,

the three judges retired
to Waring's chambers

to discuss the case.

The conference went just as expected.

Neither of the other two judges
had been persuaded

by Marshall's arguments.

Separate but equal
would stand in South Carolina.

The Briggs plaintiffs had lost,

as Marshall suspected they would, 2-1.

But, as Waring had planned,

the appeal was headed straight
to the Supreme Court.

And he meant to arm
the N.A.A.C.P. attorneys

with something for the battle
in Washington:

a dissenting opinion for the ages.

He knew he was writing for history.

He knew this was his moment.

And he labored for days
carefully constructing

and rewriting and revising over
and over again this dissent.

He wrote it with care and with
precision and with passion.

Waring's dissent is quite remarkable.

It's a direct indictment of segregation,

and it's important to say that

because so many people
were finessing the issue.

He described the testimony
of Dr. Clark

about the injury to Black
children, and he said,

"This must end, it must end now.

Segregation
is per se inequality."

Waring set off the
last sentence in a separate paragraph,

for effect.

And it was, in a way, his final
word on the vicious regime

of legalized white supremacy
in the Deep South.

Soon after he filed his dissent in Briggs,

Waring wrote President Harry
Truman with the news

that he was stepping down from
his federal judgeship.

The Warings left Charleston for good,

retiring to a small apartment
in New York City.

Thurgood Marshall was
fundraising in Alabama

when word reached him
that the Supreme Court

had finally ruled on the constitutionality

of segregation in public schools.

It had been a long and frustrating wait;

three years since the trial in
Judge Waring's courtroom.

The name "Briggs"
had been subsumed by then.

The N.A.A.C.P. had brought four
similar desegregation cases,

in Virginia, Delaware,
the District of Columbia,

and Kansas.

The five cases had been
consolidated and filed

as Brown v. Board of Education
of Topeka, Kansas.

Briggs was the
first case to arrive at the Supreme Court.

By all accounts it should have
been Briggs v. Elliott.

My personal theory is that the
court did not want this case

banning school segregation to be
focused on a Southern case.

Topeka, Kansas, was not in the South.

And the South would claim
it was being picked on.

But how do you say that if the
lead defendant

is Topeka, Kansas?

The Supreme Court has
rendered a momentous and historic decision

saying that education should
be equal in this free America.

The fact it was a unanimous decision

should set for rest once and for all

the problem as to whether or not

second class citizenship, segregation,

could be consistent any longer
with the law of the country.

Marshall and the
N.A.A.C.P. had certainly been hopeful.

I don't think there was any reason for them

to expect it to be unanimous.

That must have been a surprise.

The decision is written
in a manner and at a length

such that it could be printed in
every newspaper in the country.

So that it could be read and understood

by any literate person in the
United States.

So that it could be read to someone

who might not be able to read
him or herself,

and that person would be able to understand

why and how the justices
had reached this conclusion.

Citing evidence
from the Clark's doll studies,

Chief Justice Earl Warren was explicit

about the very real damage
suffered by children

segregated by race.

"Any language in
Plessy v. Ferguson contrary

to this finding," he wrote,
"is rejected."

But Warren steered clear of any
mention of Waties Waring,

who had been the only federal
judge in the five cases

to file a dissent arguing

that segregation itself
was unconstitutional.

You got
to remember at this time Judge Waring

is a very polarizing figure.

He's probably the most reviled
white man in the South

among white Southerners.

The court didn't make his dissent

the basis of their decision.

But it is obvious when you read it,

it is Judge Waring's language.

Back in New York City,

Walter White and other luminaries

from New York's civil rights
community gathered

in the Warings' parlor to toast

the historic milestone
and the final triumph

of Judge Waring's judicial strategy.

A few miles away,
Thurgood Marshall and his team

held their own victory party,

allowing themselves only
the briefest of revelries.

For Marshall, the Brown
ruling did not mark the end

of a hard-fought battle,
but the beginning of a new one.

Everyone was celebrating in the office

and Marshall said "You're all
a bunch of fools," you know,

"We have a lot more work ahead, okay?

We have to get back to work."

He understood what was to come.

As a leader, you can barely
experience excitement

without looking around the
corner for whatever

is the next challenge
or work that has to be done.

Hello, welcome to "Like It Is."

Today's edition features
a look back in time

into the tragedy of Isaac Woodard,

a man whose confrontation with
Southern racism

came to symbolize the brutality in America

at the end of World War II.

Nearly 40 years
after his blinding, Isaac Woodard agreed

to revisit the details of his ordeal

with a local television journalist.

Do you think back towards those days,

to have something like this happen to you

while you're still in uniform?

A lot of people ask me,
was I bitter with, you know,

with the world, with everybody?

I told them, no, I wasn't.
I wasn't because...

I said, well, everybody
ain't bad, you know,

that I know.

And the one that I'm really bitter against,

the one that really did it to me.

He never served a day... No, no, no.

Kept his job. Right, right.

Kept his job, they didn't even
take him off the force,

you know?

For the first few years,

he called them names
I couldn't even mention.

But, uh, he grew out of it.

I saw the part of him after the bitterness,

and the anger, and the frustration.

Most of the time I saw him, he was smiling.

He was so well-dressed.

There was a tie clip on the tie,

and you could tell the way he walked,

he was proud of who he was.

In 1962, the U.S.
Army finally granted Sergeant Woodard

the disability benefits they had denied him

in the years following his blinding.

Eventually, he was able to buy

several properties throughout the Bronx

and provide a comfortable life
for himself and his family.

What do you think
that people should learn about,

what's happened to Isaac Woodard,

what lesson is there about America?

Well, I mean, the way I feel
about it, you know,

that people should learn how
to live with one another,

and how to treat one another.

Because after all, we all are,
we're human beings,

regardless of color.

Everybody should, you know, have
some sympathy for one another,

you know?

And don't do cruel things to one another

that you don't wanna be did to you.

That's the way I feel about it.

Isaac Woodard died in 1992, at age 73,

entirely unaware that his simple request

to be treated like a man, and
the injustice that followed it,

had emboldened a federal judge

and the president of the United States

to pursue the destruction
of legalized segregation.

Historians
like to talk in terms of grand narratives.

But when you look closely,
you find often it is

a single person taking a certain action.

It's not often sufficient
to cause grand change,

but it is a spark.

Every fundamental shift
in this country has required the courage

of ordinary people to demand
that they be respected,

exceptional human beings
who were willing to put

their lives on the line.

The ways in which they changed this country

we accept almost like air,

without ever giving a moment's thought

to the individuals who
sacrificed themselves for it.

You don't know what the effect
of your speaking up

and using your voice will be.

It may even look like it was nominal.

But in the long course of history,

can be earth-shattering,
and powerful and important.