Our Chapter members met on March 8th at the Country Club of Orlando, and were joined by many members of our local judiciary. Our honored speaker, Judge Richard Gergel, Federal District Judge, South Carolina, and author of “Unexampled Courage,” told the heartbreaking and compelling story of the beating and blinding of a decorated World War II African American soldier, Sargent Isaac Woodard.
The beating and blinding of Sargent Woodard by a law enforcement officer following his discharge at the end of World War II brought national attention to the gross prejudice and injustice endured by African Americans during the Jim Crow Era. This atrocity deeply moved Judge J. Waties Waring, Federal District, South Carolina (1942-1968) who encouraged Thurgood Marshall, the era’s leading civil rights attorney, to challenge the “Separate But Equal” doctrine established in 1896 by Plessy v. Ferguson. This back story, as told by Judge Gergel, revealed how this bold action ultimately helped pave the way to one of the most significant United States Supreme Court civil rights cases, Brown v. Board of Education, which de facto overruled the Plessy decision in 1954.