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Good morning,
this is Orson Welles speaking.
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I'd like to read to you an affidavit.
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"I, Isaac Woodard Jr.,
being duly sworn do depose"
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"and state as follows."
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"I am 27 years old and a veteran
of the United States Army,"
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"having served for 15 months
in the South Pacific,"
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"and earned one battle star."
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"While I was in uniform
I purchased a ticket"
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"to Winnsboro, South Carolina,
and took the bus headed there"
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"to pick up my wife to come to New York"
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"to see my father and mother."
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"About one hour out of Atlanta,
the bus drivers got off"
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"and went and got the police."
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"The policeman grabbed me
by my left arm and twisted it"
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"behind my back."
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"I figured he was trying
to make me resist."
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"I did not resist against him."
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"Another policeman held his gun on me"
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"while the other one was beating me."
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"I started to get up, he started
punching me in my eyes."
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"He knocked me unconscious."
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"I woke up next morning
and could not see."
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"They took me to the veteran's hospital"
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"in Columbia, South Carolina."
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"They told me I should join
a blind school."
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You have a man
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wearing a dress uniform.
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He has medals on his chest.
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All the symbols of sacrifice
and service are there
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and it doesn't matter,
it just doesn't matter.
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To a white Southerner in 1946,
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nothing is more provocative
than a Black man in uniform.
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You have law
enforcement coming with the full savagery
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of Southern racism.
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No one can say that
what happened to Isaac Woodard
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was justified.
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It just seemed to be something
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that shouldn't happen in America.
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Now it seems the officer of the law
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was just another white man with a stick
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who wanted to teach a Negro boy a lesson,
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to show a Negro boy where
he belonged: in the darkness.
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Are we going to have
people who live in the United States
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and are less equal than others?
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What are we going to do about this?
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You say the North is bullying the South.
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I'm afraid you're missing the point.
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This isn't another battlefield
of the Civil War.
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The sides aren't the blue and the gray.
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They are the right and the wrong.
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Who would have guessed
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that the blinding of a heroic veteran
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would be the beginning of the
end of Jim Crow in America?
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Going home...
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that's the sweetest words
a G.I. ever heard.
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Back to the good old U.S.A.,
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where just the formality of mustering out,
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and then home sweet home.
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For the G.I.s
discharged just hours earlier,
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the wait inside the Greyhound
bus terminal was excruciating.
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They were on the final leg
of a journey that had taken them
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halfway around the world and back.
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Freedom was so close
they could nearly taste it.
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The soldiers that were there,
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they had to have been jubilant and proud.
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Happy to return home, on your soil.
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So, it had to have been just
an exciting time for all of them
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to go home and see their
families, finally.
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On the 8:00
Augusta to Columbia coach that night
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was Sergeant Isaac Woodard,
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headed home to Winnsboro,
South Carolina, to see his wife
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for the first time in several years.
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Woodard was still in uniform,
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carrying a battle star
for bravery under fire,
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and a final paycheck
from the U.S. Army
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in the extraordinary sum of $695,
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enough to start the kind of life
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he hadn't dared dream of before the war.
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Like the other 900,000
African-American soldiers
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returning home from duty,
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Isaac Woodard had come to see
this bright new future
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as his due.
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African Americans had
fought in all of the major wars
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in American history, and there'd
always been this theme of
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if we fight and we show our loyalty,
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then we are going to advance
and be recognized
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as more equal citizens.
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And that dream had always been frustrated.
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But World War II was actually
quite different from past wars
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for African Americans because
it was a special kind of war.
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This war, this particular war,
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crystalizes around the idea
of this fight against fascism.
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And that means that it is
a fight against inequality,
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of suppressing groups of people
because of their race.
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So you have Black soldiers coming home,
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having been inculcated
with the idea that America
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stands for something different
than fascism,
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something different than racial
and ethnic discrimination.
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Something better.
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By 10:00
on that February evening,
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Isaac Woodard was little more
than an hour away
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from his homecoming in Winnsboro.
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The atmosphere on the bus is jovial,
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filled with the relief that soldiers feel
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after surviving 15 months at war.
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Black soldiers and white
soldiers are talking together,
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joking together.
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Eventually a bottle of whiskey
gets opened and passed around.
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There were a few non-soldiers on the bus
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and they were very uncomfortable
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with the interaction between
the white and Black soldiers.
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There were complaints to the bus driver
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and the bus driver didn't like it.
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There are, of course, in 1946,
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no bathroom facilities
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on public buses.
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Isaac Woodard asked the
bus driver if at the next stop
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he could be allowed to disembark
and to go to the bathroom.
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And the bus driver tells him,
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"Boy, go sit back down."
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The bus driver cursed him.
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Isaac Woodard cursed him back
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and proclaimed his manhood.
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He just said to the
gentleman, "You know, you don't have to
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speak to me in that manner,
I'm a man just like you."
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In other words,
"Give me respect."
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Military training and service
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turned a Black man from
the rural Deep South
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with a fifth grade education
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into a man willing to say words
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that he knew could put his life at risk.
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There is no doubt
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when he said that,
that he was under any illusions
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about what he was saying,
where he was saying it...
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on a bus, at night, in the Deep South.
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But he was a veteran.
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He was wearing the uniform.
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He was surrounded by veterans
who were wearing the uniforms.
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They were returning from a war
that they had won.
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And he was a stronger man because of it.
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The bus driver is furious.
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At the next town,
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he goes looking for a police officer
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to have Woodard removed from his bus.
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Woodard's kind of perplexed.
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He steps off the bus
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and as he's trying to explain himself,
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the police chief brings out his blackjack,
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which is like a baton,
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but it's spring-loaded
and it, it has tremendous force,
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and hits Woodard over the head with it.
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A soldier aboard the
bus watched as the officer took Woodard
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by the arm and forced him around
the corner and out of sight.
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"That is the last I saw of him,"
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he would tell investigators
a few months later.
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They started beating him
all across the head.
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And they gouge his eyes out.
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They didn't beat them out.
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They put the stick in there
and twisted it.
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They threw him in jail and he told me
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they poured whiskey over him
to say he was drunk.
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He was arrested for, supposedly,
disorderly conduct,
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disturbing the peace, and being drunk.
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He was not drunk.
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He was not being disorderly.
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And he did not disturb the peace.
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He spends
the night in jail, unable to see,
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in excruciating pain.
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The next morning he is taken to the judge.
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He is levied a fine,
but he can't see to sign
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the paperwork that is put before him.
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Ultimately, when Woodard
is examined by specialists,
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they determine that he will
never see again.
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The injuries are severe
and they are irreversible.
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He will be blind for life.
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You spend 42 months in the military,
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overseas in the Philippines,
and you come home to this.
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How can you just gouge someone's eyes out?
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Anybody, how can...
you can't do that.
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And it hurts me to even think
about it, but it happened.
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It's sad.
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Well, that was, I'd say,
a part of ignorance.
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You know, that's the bottom
line, plain ignorance.
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As World War II ended,
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900,000 African-American veterans
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returned to America...
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75% of them to the South,
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most of them to the rural South.
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The war took Black
soldiers out of communities
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where they had to adhere
to a certain set of social norms
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in which they were subservient
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and opened up possibilities.
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Even a segregated army
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gave chances for training and leadership,
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and advancement and recognition.
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Those in Europe had been treated
very respectfully.
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And for the first time in their lives,
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the color of their skin was not
the predominant
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characteristic to which
they were identified.
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They came home feeling
like they had done their duty
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in defense of American democracy
and liberty.
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But, when they returned home,
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they largely saw nothing had changed.
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White Southerners of that era considered
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the returning soldiers
to be potential trouble,
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not great American citizens.
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As some would say,
they no longer knew their place.
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Black soldiers were
especially threatening to
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the racial mores
that undermined segregation.
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Black soldiers were in uniform.
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They wore emblems of authority.
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They often carried themselves
with a sense of authority
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that the enforcers of white supremacy
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found particularly threatening.
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Wearing
the uniform of the U.S. military
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grants one the prerogatives
of citizenship.
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And Black men make no bones
about the fact that they feel
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completely deserving
of those prerogatives.
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And they become the target.
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So, in 1946, what you see is one incident
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of racial violence after another.
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00:14:06,535 --> 00:14:09,676
There was little
recourse... and little protection...
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00:14:09,745 --> 00:14:10,884
for the African-American veterans
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victimized in the South.
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Investigating these hate crimes
often fell to a small team
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of lawyers at the
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00:14:20,376 --> 00:14:23,828
National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People,
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headed by Thurgood Marshall.
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The N.A.A.C.P.
is just inundated with cases
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00:14:33,217 --> 00:14:35,426
of violence against Black soldiers,
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00:14:35,495 --> 00:14:38,325
wrongful court martials,
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00:14:38,394 --> 00:14:43,227
massive riots, slaughter.
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00:14:43,296 --> 00:14:48,715
And Thurgood Marshall's office
had files from floor to ceiling
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of these cases.
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A harrowing new report
landed in the N.A.A.C.P. legal office
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almost every week in 1946.
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One Black Army veteran
was murdered on his front porch
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in Taylor County, Georgia.
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His offense had been casting a
vote in the Democratic primary.
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A week later, 120 miles away,
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a Black veteran was kidnapped
by a lynch mob...
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00:15:19,988 --> 00:15:21,990
along with a friend and their two wives,
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one of them reportedly
seven months pregnant.
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00:15:26,684 --> 00:15:30,791
The four were shot roughly
60 times at close range.
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00:15:30,860 --> 00:15:33,242
Eyewitness accounts reported
that the lynching party
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included local police officers.
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In the middle of what
Thurgood Marshall called
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00:15:53,297 --> 00:15:56,265
that "terrible" season of 1946,
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00:15:56,334 --> 00:15:58,405
Isaac Woodard walked into
the New York City offices
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00:15:58,474 --> 00:16:02,375
of N.A.A.C.P. head Walter White.
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00:16:02,444 --> 00:16:06,448
The 27-year-old South Carolina
native struck White
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as polite and handsome,
255
00:16:09,140 --> 00:16:12,074
with the ramrod straight bearing
of a soldier.
256
00:16:12,143 --> 00:16:15,457
"I saw you, Mr. White,
257
00:16:15,526 --> 00:16:19,944
when you visited my outfit
in the Pacific," he said.
258
00:16:20,013 --> 00:16:23,016
"I could see then."
259
00:16:23,085 --> 00:16:26,330
Woodard then sat down and
told the story of his blinding
260
00:16:26,399 --> 00:16:30,886
in a sworn affidavit.
261
00:16:30,955 --> 00:16:33,682
The policeman asked me, was I discharged?
262
00:16:33,751 --> 00:16:35,442
And when I said yes,
263
00:16:35,511 --> 00:16:38,445
that's when he started beating
me with a billy,
264
00:16:38,514 --> 00:16:40,758
hitting me across the top of the head.
265
00:16:40,827 --> 00:16:45,004
After that, I grabbed his billy,
and wrung it out of his hands.
266
00:16:45,073 --> 00:16:48,041
Another policeman came up
and threw his gun on me,
267
00:16:48,110 --> 00:16:50,492
told me to drop the billy or he'd drop me,
268
00:16:50,561 --> 00:16:53,288
so I dropped the billy.
269
00:16:53,357 --> 00:16:56,739
He knocked me unconscious.
270
00:16:56,808 --> 00:16:58,983
He hollered, "Get up!"
271
00:16:59,052 --> 00:17:02,159
When I started to get up,
he started punching me
272
00:17:02,228 --> 00:17:05,507
in the eyes with the end of his billy.
273
00:17:09,890 --> 00:17:13,170
N.A.A.C.P. officials,
they were moved by this,
274
00:17:13,239 --> 00:17:16,932
like everyone was moved
by just the tragedy of it.
275
00:17:17,001 --> 00:17:20,384
In addition, the N.A.A.C.P.
leadership was always
276
00:17:20,453 --> 00:17:23,249
on the lookout for cases of injustice
277
00:17:23,318 --> 00:17:27,598
that they could use
to really dramatize the nature
278
00:17:27,667 --> 00:17:29,772
of the Southern racial system...
279
00:17:29,841 --> 00:17:31,912
for African Americans around the country,
280
00:17:31,981 --> 00:17:35,295
to get them to support
the N.A.A.C.P.'s work,
281
00:17:35,364 --> 00:17:39,437
and for white people
to make them understand
282
00:17:39,506 --> 00:17:41,198
what's really going on.
283
00:17:43,821 --> 00:17:48,205
Once Walter White
gets a hold of Isaac Woodard's story,
284
00:17:48,274 --> 00:17:49,620
he is on fire.
285
00:17:52,899 --> 00:17:56,247
He is looking for ways
to publicize this story
286
00:17:56,316 --> 00:18:00,355
and he's looking for
the biggest platform out there.
287
00:18:02,150 --> 00:18:04,255
How do you do, ladies and gentlemen?
288
00:18:04,324 --> 00:18:06,913
This is Orson Welles.
289
00:18:06,982 --> 00:18:09,985
White and his new press agent reached out
290
00:18:10,054 --> 00:18:12,850
to one of the nation's great dramatists,
291
00:18:12,919 --> 00:18:15,473
the boy wonder of stage and cinema,
292
00:18:15,542 --> 00:18:18,511
31-year-old Orson Welles.
293
00:18:18,580 --> 00:18:23,930
In the summer of 1946,
Welles was hosting a radio show
294
00:18:23,999 --> 00:18:26,519
that broadcast nationally every Sunday.
295
00:18:26,588 --> 00:18:29,384
The N.A.A.C.P. goes to him
296
00:18:29,453 --> 00:18:32,939
and says, "We need your help
to share this story."
297
00:18:41,706 --> 00:18:44,813
The story fascinated him,
298
00:18:44,882 --> 00:18:46,332
particularly the whodunnit quality.
299
00:18:46,401 --> 00:18:49,266
No one knew who this police officer was.
300
00:18:52,510 --> 00:18:56,169
Now it seems the
officer of the law who blinded
301
00:18:56,238 --> 00:18:58,930
the young Negro boy in the
affidavit has not been named.
302
00:18:58,999 --> 00:19:00,725
Till we know more about him, for just now,
303
00:19:00,794 --> 00:19:03,659
we'll call the policeman Officer X.
304
00:19:03,728 --> 00:19:06,904
Officer X, I'm talking to you.
305
00:19:06,973 --> 00:19:10,563
We invite you to luxuriate
in secrecy, it will be brief.
306
00:19:10,632 --> 00:19:14,498
You're going to be uncovered!
307
00:19:14,567 --> 00:19:18,950
Welles came back
to the Woodard story the next week,
308
00:19:19,019 --> 00:19:24,542
and the week after, drawing more
listeners each episode.
309
00:19:24,611 --> 00:19:26,337
But there were holes in the story.
310
00:19:26,406 --> 00:19:30,307
Three weeks into the radio broadcasts,
311
00:19:30,376 --> 00:19:33,344
there were still no real leads
about Woodard's assailant,
312
00:19:33,413 --> 00:19:35,208
or even about the town
where Woodard had been pulled
313
00:19:35,277 --> 00:19:37,314
from the bus.
314
00:19:37,383 --> 00:19:41,490
The N.A.A.C.P. legal team
was getting nervous.
315
00:19:41,559 --> 00:19:44,459
Marshall says,
"We gotta get this right."
316
00:19:44,528 --> 00:19:46,840
We've got our friends
out on a limb on this thing.
317
00:19:51,569 --> 00:19:55,642
Orson Welles hires
private investigators to go
318
00:19:55,711 --> 00:19:58,818
throughout the bus route to
figure out where this happened.
319
00:19:58,887 --> 00:20:03,547
And the N.A.A.C.P.'s
national office has its lawyers
320
00:20:03,616 --> 00:20:04,927
searching these communities
321
00:20:04,996 --> 00:20:07,344
asking does anyone know this story.
322
00:20:10,450 --> 00:20:14,765
Arriving in, unsolicited,
in the national office
323
00:20:14,834 --> 00:20:19,425
is a letter from a Black soldier who says,
324
00:20:19,494 --> 00:20:23,705
"I heard on the radio about the
blinding of Sergeant Woodard.
325
00:20:23,774 --> 00:20:24,878
"I was on the bus.
326
00:20:24,947 --> 00:20:27,156
It was Batesburg."
327
00:20:30,781 --> 00:20:33,922
I have before me wires
and press releases to the effect
328
00:20:33,991 --> 00:20:37,546
that a policeman of Batesburg,
329
00:20:37,615 --> 00:20:42,793
a man by the name of Shull,
has admitted that he was
330
00:20:42,862 --> 00:20:46,969
the police officer
who blinded Isaac Woodard.
331
00:20:47,038 --> 00:20:51,595
Officer X, we know your name now.
332
00:20:51,664 --> 00:20:54,736
Now that we found you out,
we'll never lose you.
333
00:20:54,805 --> 00:20:56,807
You can't get rid of me.
334
00:20:56,876 --> 00:20:58,602
We have an appointment.
335
00:21:02,916 --> 00:21:06,126
The Welles broadcast
had put the story in the headlines,
336
00:21:06,195 --> 00:21:09,682
and a whirlwind began to swirl
around Isaac Woodard.
337
00:21:15,343 --> 00:21:18,415
When word got out that the Army
had denied the young sergeant
338
00:21:18,484 --> 00:21:20,175
full disability benefits...
339
00:21:20,244 --> 00:21:22,453
on the grounds that he was
blinded a few hours
340
00:21:22,522 --> 00:21:25,249
after his discharge...
341
00:21:25,318 --> 00:21:28,010
luminaries from New York's
Black community organized
342
00:21:28,079 --> 00:21:29,667
a benefit concert on his behalf.
343
00:21:36,398 --> 00:21:39,263
Headlined by some of the biggest
names in music,
344
00:21:39,332 --> 00:21:42,611
stars from Billie Holliday
to Woody Guthrie turned up
345
00:21:42,680 --> 00:21:48,134
at Lewisohn Stadium in Harlem to
raise money for "the blind G.I."
346
00:21:56,487 --> 00:21:59,594
Heavyweight champion Joe Louis,
hero of Black America,
347
00:21:59,663 --> 00:22:03,805
stepped forward to co-chair the event.
348
00:22:03,874 --> 00:22:07,118
Joe Louis sent a
limousine to our house in the Bronx.
349
00:22:07,187 --> 00:22:09,397
I was 11 years old.
350
00:22:09,466 --> 00:22:10,812
That excited me.
351
00:22:12,503 --> 00:22:15,437
Seated beside his mother, Isaac Woodard,
352
00:22:15,506 --> 00:22:18,751
a young man from tiny
Winnsboro, South Carolina,
353
00:22:18,820 --> 00:22:22,893
was awestruck to learn
that nearly 20,000 people
354
00:22:22,962 --> 00:22:25,965
had gathered in his honor.
355
00:22:26,034 --> 00:22:27,898
10,000 more were turned away.
356
00:22:36,009 --> 00:22:39,461
The crowd had been drawn
by the all-star performances,
357
00:22:39,530 --> 00:22:43,638
but it was Woodard himself who
turned out to be the headliner.
358
00:22:45,916 --> 00:22:49,298
One reporter noted that applause
lasted for five minutes
359
00:22:49,368 --> 00:22:52,267
after he took the stage.
360
00:22:52,336 --> 00:22:55,822
He spoke in a very
low voice and people had to go be
361
00:22:55,891 --> 00:22:58,066
completely silent to hear him,
362
00:22:58,135 --> 00:23:01,103
but it was a powerful account
of what happened.
363
00:23:03,796 --> 00:23:07,282
I spent three-and-a-half
years in service of my country
364
00:23:07,351 --> 00:23:10,527
and thought I would be treated
as a man when I returned
365
00:23:10,596 --> 00:23:12,632
to civilian life,
366
00:23:12,701 --> 00:23:15,980
but I was mistaken.
367
00:23:16,049 --> 00:23:19,328
If the loss of my sight
will make people in America
368
00:23:19,398 --> 00:23:21,986
get together to prevent
what happened to me
369
00:23:22,055 --> 00:23:26,750
from ever happening again
to any other person,
370
00:23:26,819 --> 00:23:29,960
I would be glad.
371
00:23:36,553 --> 00:23:41,109
The benefit concert netted
more than $10,000 for Isaac Woodard...
372
00:23:41,178 --> 00:23:44,284
enough to buy a house, but little else.
373
00:23:45,734 --> 00:23:47,874
One N.A.A.C.P. staffer noted
374
00:23:47,943 --> 00:23:50,359
though Woodard was riding high now,
375
00:23:50,429 --> 00:23:55,537
"in ten years no one
will remember" his name.
376
00:23:55,606 --> 00:23:59,403
The N.A.A.C.P. basically
adopts a plan to make Isaac Woodard
377
00:23:59,472 --> 00:24:02,648
the centerpiece of a campaign
for the promotion
378
00:24:02,717 --> 00:24:05,409
of the civil rights
of all returning veterans.
379
00:24:07,791 --> 00:24:12,554
He goes on a multi-city
nationwide speaking tour
380
00:24:12,623 --> 00:24:16,869
that gathers huge crowds
all across the country.
381
00:24:25,360 --> 00:24:28,225
It's hard to imagine
how many other Black men
382
00:24:28,294 --> 00:24:33,541
would have been as well known
in America in 1946 and 1947
383
00:24:33,610 --> 00:24:35,059
than Isaac Woodard.
384
00:24:38,373 --> 00:24:40,824
So many victims of
Southern violence are not alive.
385
00:24:42,826 --> 00:24:46,795
Their bullet-ridden corpses
are in a grave somewhere,
386
00:24:46,864 --> 00:24:51,110
but he's alive to talk about his story.
387
00:24:53,043 --> 00:24:57,841
My dad told me he remembers
when the mailman would arrive daily,
388
00:24:57,910 --> 00:25:02,017
he would have a huge duffel bag
that he would carry
389
00:25:02,086 --> 00:25:04,399
and the letters would just
pour out onto the floor.
390
00:25:06,539 --> 00:25:12,683
How does Isaac Woodard
negotiate this new world that he's in?
391
00:25:12,752 --> 00:25:15,997
He's blinded, he's got to figure
out how to support himself
392
00:25:16,066 --> 00:25:19,828
and also being called upon to be a symbol,
393
00:25:19,897 --> 00:25:22,175
where he didn't want to be a symbol.
394
00:25:22,244 --> 00:25:25,558
He just was expecting to be
discharged from the Army
395
00:25:25,627 --> 00:25:26,973
and go back to his family.
396
00:25:30,183 --> 00:25:32,392
The blind soldier
fought for me in this war.
397
00:25:32,461 --> 00:25:36,017
The least I can do now is fight for him.
398
00:25:36,086 --> 00:25:39,020
I have eyes.
He hasn't.
399
00:25:39,089 --> 00:25:42,092
I was born a white man.
400
00:25:42,161 --> 00:25:45,613
And until a colored man
is a full citizen, like me,
401
00:25:45,682 --> 00:25:48,926
I haven't the leisure to enjoy
the freedom that colored man
402
00:25:48,995 --> 00:25:53,552
risked his life to maintain for me.
403
00:25:53,621 --> 00:25:58,971
I don't own what I have until
he owns an equal share of it.
404
00:26:02,181 --> 00:26:05,978
Until somebody beats me and blinds me,
405
00:26:06,047 --> 00:26:08,843
I am in his debt.
406
00:26:12,329 --> 00:26:17,058
The Welles broadcast
generated huge attention.
407
00:26:17,127 --> 00:26:21,476
The N.A.A.C.P. built on that
and civil rights groups
408
00:26:21,545 --> 00:26:25,445
around the country were writing
letters demanding
409
00:26:25,514 --> 00:26:29,104
for the prosecution of this police officer
410
00:26:29,173 --> 00:26:31,348
for the beating and blinding
of Sergeant Woodard.
411
00:26:34,247 --> 00:26:38,389
In terms of
getting justice for Isaac Woodard,
412
00:26:38,458 --> 00:26:41,530
it's going to be extremely
difficult, if not impossible.
413
00:26:41,600 --> 00:26:46,121
There are no
prosecutions of white police officers
414
00:26:46,190 --> 00:26:49,884
by the federal government
for excessive force.
415
00:26:49,953 --> 00:26:53,957
They're getting 1,000 to 2,000
complaints a year,
416
00:26:54,026 --> 00:26:57,512
and they're essentially not doing much.
417
00:26:59,618 --> 00:27:02,966
Everybody understood
that Southern state governments
418
00:27:03,035 --> 00:27:05,313
did not protect against violence.
419
00:27:05,382 --> 00:27:10,870
In fact, local officials were
often the purveyors of violence.
420
00:27:10,939 --> 00:27:13,632
So, there'd been calls and calls and calls
421
00:27:13,701 --> 00:27:17,152
on the federal government
to take some kind of action.
422
00:27:17,221 --> 00:27:20,155
But the Department of Justice
had largely been
423
00:27:20,224 --> 00:27:21,985
unwilling to step up to that task.
424
00:27:22,054 --> 00:27:26,127
The Justice Department
had endless explanations
425
00:27:26,196 --> 00:27:29,924
about why it simply
wasn't possible to do this.
426
00:27:29,993 --> 00:27:34,687
You had all white juries,
all white grand juries.
427
00:27:34,756 --> 00:27:35,964
Why are they all white?
428
00:27:36,033 --> 00:27:39,347
Because African Americans
are disenfranchised.
429
00:27:39,416 --> 00:27:42,108
And getting a conviction
against a white police officer
430
00:27:42,177 --> 00:27:43,558
is not realistic.
431
00:27:43,627 --> 00:27:47,113
It's not going to happen in the South.
432
00:27:47,182 --> 00:27:49,529
There's this part of it
that is about treating the South
433
00:27:49,598 --> 00:27:53,223
as though it is some peculiar,
unique, hothouse flower
434
00:27:53,292 --> 00:27:55,087
that has to be handled carefully.
435
00:27:56,502 --> 00:27:59,056
And that, that, that you kind of
didn't try to interfere
436
00:27:59,125 --> 00:28:01,990
with something that was regarded
as kind of cultural.
437
00:28:02,059 --> 00:28:06,892
And this really comes out of
the idea that Southern mores
438
00:28:06,961 --> 00:28:09,964
were sufficiently different,
that it would do you no good
439
00:28:10,033 --> 00:28:12,863
to try to interfere with them.
440
00:28:12,932 --> 00:28:16,177
What the N.A.A.C.P. can do
441
00:28:16,246 --> 00:28:19,870
is try to channel righteous outrage,
442
00:28:19,939 --> 00:28:26,739
try to shine a light on this
incredibly heinous incident
443
00:28:26,808 --> 00:28:32,296
and perhaps go above the head
of local law enforcement
444
00:28:32,365 --> 00:28:37,474
to Washington to prick the
conscience of the president.
445
00:28:37,543 --> 00:28:40,235
And that, perhaps, through
the powers of the presidency,
446
00:28:40,304 --> 00:28:45,206
some change can come to the South.
447
00:28:45,275 --> 00:28:47,795
There'd been a
long tradition of Black leaders
448
00:28:47,864 --> 00:28:49,866
meeting with presidents
of the United States.
449
00:28:49,935 --> 00:28:54,456
But there's a lot of suspicion of Truman.
450
00:28:54,525 --> 00:28:56,389
You know, how liberal is he?
451
00:28:56,458 --> 00:28:59,289
How sympathetic to the
N.A.A.C.P. is he going to be?
452
00:28:59,358 --> 00:29:03,603
Nothing in Truman's background
would lead one to believe
453
00:29:03,672 --> 00:29:07,918
that he would act differently
than the presidents before him.
454
00:29:13,303 --> 00:29:15,892
Civil rights leaders had
good reason to regard Harry Truman
455
00:29:15,961 --> 00:29:19,654
as an unlikely champion
of Black Americans.
456
00:29:19,723 --> 00:29:23,623
He had grown up in Independence, Missouri,
457
00:29:23,692 --> 00:29:27,627
a town that still celebrated
its Confederate heritage.
458
00:29:29,837 --> 00:29:31,424
Truman's grandparents on both sides
459
00:29:31,493 --> 00:29:34,945
were rebel partisans and slaveowners.
460
00:29:35,014 --> 00:29:38,190
Harry Truman's
mother thought John Wilkes Booth
461
00:29:38,259 --> 00:29:39,950
was an American hero.
462
00:29:40,019 --> 00:29:42,711
She refused to sleep
in the Lincoln bedroom
463
00:29:42,781 --> 00:29:44,472
in the White House.
464
00:29:44,541 --> 00:29:49,891
He grew up in a
household where belief in white supremacy
465
00:29:49,960 --> 00:29:52,307
was simply in the air.
466
00:29:52,376 --> 00:29:56,242
People used racial epithets very casually
467
00:29:56,311 --> 00:29:59,936
and he continued to use them
well into his adult life.
468
00:30:03,008 --> 00:30:05,734
Despite his background,
President Truman was willing
469
00:30:05,804 --> 00:30:08,703
to listen to the concerns
of civil rights advocates.
470
00:30:10,912 --> 00:30:13,121
On September 19, 1946,
471
00:30:13,190 --> 00:30:16,055
Truman invited Walter White
and a delegation
472
00:30:16,124 --> 00:30:17,677
of religious and labor leaders
473
00:30:17,746 --> 00:30:20,059
for a meeting in the Oval Office.
474
00:30:23,442 --> 00:30:27,170
The meeting begins
and the civil rights leaders
475
00:30:27,239 --> 00:30:31,208
are asking the president
to pass legislation
476
00:30:31,277 --> 00:30:33,762
prohibiting lynching in America.
477
00:30:33,832 --> 00:30:35,972
Harry Truman says to the leaders,
478
00:30:36,041 --> 00:30:38,767
"I understand your concerns,
479
00:30:38,837 --> 00:30:44,118
but there's not the will in this
country for new legislation."
480
00:30:44,187 --> 00:30:47,604
Walter White is listening
to this discussion.
481
00:30:47,673 --> 00:30:53,161
And he realizes that
Harry Truman doesn't get it.
482
00:30:53,230 --> 00:30:56,509
He stops the discussion
and says, "Mr. President,
483
00:30:56,578 --> 00:31:00,341
I need to tell you the story of
the blinding of Isaac Woodard."
484
00:31:05,173 --> 00:31:08,970
People like Harry
Truman need to be woken up.
485
00:31:09,039 --> 00:31:11,697
That was part of
the N.A.A.C.P.'s job,
486
00:31:11,766 --> 00:31:13,492
was to wake people up
487
00:31:13,561 --> 00:31:16,184
to injustices they tolerated,
488
00:31:16,253 --> 00:31:17,461
that they ignored,
489
00:31:17,530 --> 00:31:20,637
that they were complicit in,
and to make them see it.
490
00:31:25,435 --> 00:31:27,609
Harry Truman, decades
earlier, after World War I had been
491
00:31:27,678 --> 00:31:29,301
a returning veteran.
492
00:31:29,370 --> 00:31:32,235
A white returning veteran, to be sure,
493
00:31:32,304 --> 00:31:34,409
but the idea that a war veteran
494
00:31:34,478 --> 00:31:36,929
wearing his uniform
could be pulled off a bus
495
00:31:36,998 --> 00:31:41,761
and attacked and beaten
by law enforcement officers,
496
00:31:41,830 --> 00:31:44,937
surprised Truman and enraged him.
497
00:31:45,006 --> 00:31:50,598
Truman became
red-faced, extremely agitated,
498
00:31:50,667 --> 00:31:55,672
jaw clenched, and then turns
to his staff and says,
499
00:31:55,741 --> 00:31:58,917
"My God, I didn't know
it was as terrible as this.
500
00:31:58,986 --> 00:32:01,057
We have got to do something."
501
00:32:05,958 --> 00:32:07,995
The next day,
the president fired off a letter
502
00:32:08,064 --> 00:32:11,274
to his attorney general,
referencing Isaac Woodard
503
00:32:11,343 --> 00:32:13,966
and insisting it would
"require the inauguration
504
00:32:14,035 --> 00:32:19,834
of some sort of policy
to prevent such happenings."
505
00:32:19,903 --> 00:32:23,907
Five days later, at Truman's insistence,
506
00:32:23,976 --> 00:32:26,427
the attorney general
ordered federal prosecutors
507
00:32:26,496 --> 00:32:29,844
in South Carolina to initiate
criminal proceedings
508
00:32:29,913 --> 00:32:34,090
against Police Chief Lynwood Shull.
509
00:32:34,159 --> 00:32:36,368
This is unprecedented
510
00:32:36,437 --> 00:32:39,958
for the president of the United States
511
00:32:40,027 --> 00:32:44,238
to involve himself
in what white Southerners see
512
00:32:44,307 --> 00:32:46,723
as a local matter.
513
00:32:50,002 --> 00:32:52,142
This was a way of life for them.
514
00:32:52,211 --> 00:32:56,836
They thought it was perfectly
normal for a Southern sheriff
515
00:32:56,905 --> 00:32:59,908
to get away with blinding a Black man.
516
00:33:02,635 --> 00:33:07,088
And so the mere fact of the
federal government's attention,
517
00:33:07,157 --> 00:33:10,919
and engagement demonstrated that
someone was watching.
518
00:33:10,989 --> 00:33:14,751
It demonstrated that perhaps
the South would not be treated
519
00:33:14,820 --> 00:33:18,651
as this peculiar region
that we won't touch.
520
00:33:18,720 --> 00:33:21,516
It was very, very powerful.
521
00:33:21,585 --> 00:33:26,038
President Truman's
resolve to hold Chief Shull accountable
522
00:33:26,107 --> 00:33:29,490
was met with predictable resistance,
523
00:33:29,559 --> 00:33:34,805
even by the U.S. attorney
in charge of the case.
524
00:33:34,874 --> 00:33:40,915
It is greeted in South
Carolina with shock, anger, revulsion,
525
00:33:40,984 --> 00:33:44,091
in the white political leadership.
526
00:33:44,160 --> 00:33:45,816
The U.S. attorney
for South Carolina
527
00:33:45,885 --> 00:33:49,199
wanted no part of this case.
528
00:33:49,268 --> 00:33:51,167
The Justice Department
makes it very clear,
529
00:33:51,236 --> 00:33:52,858
this is not a matter of debate,
530
00:33:52,927 --> 00:33:53,997
this is an order.
531
00:33:54,066 --> 00:33:55,274
You are to bring this case.
532
00:34:05,319 --> 00:34:09,564
When Isaac Woodard
returned to South Carolina for the trial,
533
00:34:09,633 --> 00:34:13,051
the N.A.A.C.P. dispatched
Franklin Williams,
534
00:34:13,120 --> 00:34:17,607
one of their finest attorneys,
to accompany him.
535
00:34:17,676 --> 00:34:20,610
The N.A.A.C.P.
sends Franklin Williams to travel
536
00:34:20,679 --> 00:34:23,061
with Isaac Woodard for several reasons:
537
00:34:23,130 --> 00:34:27,134
he's blind, he needed somebody
to navigate around,
538
00:34:27,203 --> 00:34:28,583
and also they fundamentally don't trust
539
00:34:28,652 --> 00:34:30,447
the Department of Justice.
540
00:34:33,001 --> 00:34:35,280
Franklin
Williams recognizes that the object
541
00:34:35,349 --> 00:34:38,731
of this entire thing was to make
it almost like a culture war.
542
00:34:38,800 --> 00:34:40,837
It was going to be a Southern way of life
543
00:34:40,906 --> 00:34:45,704
versus these Northern activists
and intruders trying to dictate
544
00:34:45,773 --> 00:34:47,361
their way of life on the South.
545
00:34:49,742 --> 00:34:52,297
Williams offered
plenty of assistance to the prosecution
546
00:34:52,366 --> 00:34:54,954
at their first and only meeting,
547
00:34:55,023 --> 00:34:58,199
less than 24 hours
before the start of the trial.
548
00:34:58,268 --> 00:35:00,374
He had a list of possible witnesses,
549
00:35:00,443 --> 00:35:03,377
including bus passengers
who had seen Lynnwood Shull's
550
00:35:03,446 --> 00:35:07,381
first unprovoked blows to Woodard's head.
551
00:35:08,761 --> 00:35:10,832
He also had at the ready a report
552
00:35:10,901 --> 00:35:14,388
by N.A.A.C.P. investigators
detailing Shull's history
553
00:35:14,457 --> 00:35:19,634
of violence against
the Black citizens in Batesburg.
554
00:35:19,703 --> 00:35:22,085
But the prosecution waved him off.
555
00:35:30,335 --> 00:35:33,234
On the morning of November 5, 1946,
556
00:35:33,303 --> 00:35:37,204
the courtroom in Columbia
was tense and segregated.
557
00:35:38,998 --> 00:35:42,830
Shull's supporters occupied
one section of the gallery,
558
00:35:42,899 --> 00:35:44,694
determined to witness the repudiation
559
00:35:44,763 --> 00:35:47,455
of a federal government gone too far.
560
00:35:49,008 --> 00:35:51,218
A delegation of anxious
Black college students
561
00:35:51,287 --> 00:35:52,529
took up the other half,
562
00:35:52,598 --> 00:35:55,222
hoping to catch the first glimmers
563
00:35:55,291 --> 00:35:57,534
of a sea change in Southern justice.
564
00:36:02,470 --> 00:36:05,956
A hush fell over the room
as Judge J. Waties Waring
565
00:36:06,025 --> 00:36:08,131
called the trial to order.
566
00:36:10,168 --> 00:36:14,931
J. Waties Waring was
an eighth-generation Charlestonian.
567
00:36:15,000 --> 00:36:19,107
His father was a Confederate veteran,
568
00:36:19,177 --> 00:36:23,905
multiple generations
of his family were slaveholders.
569
00:36:23,974 --> 00:36:27,150
He was no advocate for civil rights.
570
00:36:27,219 --> 00:36:30,636
And he, frankly, early on
when he got assigned this case,
571
00:36:30,705 --> 00:36:33,398
he had a lot of doubts
about the appropriateness
572
00:36:33,467 --> 00:36:36,884
of the federal government
to prosecute a police officer.
573
00:36:39,645 --> 00:36:43,925
Judge Waring, like most
in South Carolina's political class,
574
00:36:43,994 --> 00:36:45,996
harbored plenty of suspicions
575
00:36:46,065 --> 00:36:48,896
about federal intervention in this case.
576
00:36:48,965 --> 00:36:51,795
Chiefly, that President Truman
was motivated more
577
00:36:51,864 --> 00:36:56,524
by the coming midterms
than a concern for justice.
578
00:36:56,593 --> 00:36:59,596
But Waring's skepticism began unraveling
579
00:36:59,665 --> 00:37:02,081
as soon as Isaac Woodard rose to testify.
580
00:37:04,739 --> 00:37:06,707
He's wearing a brown suit.
581
00:37:06,776 --> 00:37:08,467
He has sunglasses.
582
00:37:08,536 --> 00:37:10,228
He has to be guided to the witness chair
583
00:37:10,297 --> 00:37:12,678
by court personnel.
584
00:37:12,747 --> 00:37:15,474
And he then begins
on the direct examination
585
00:37:15,543 --> 00:37:19,720
to describe what happened,
586
00:37:19,789 --> 00:37:24,587
and the story is just completely credible.
587
00:37:24,656 --> 00:37:28,073
Waring knows it's true.
588
00:37:28,142 --> 00:37:33,872
Waring is face-to-face
with this man who bears on his body
589
00:37:33,941 --> 00:37:37,427
the scars of Southern racism.
590
00:37:37,496 --> 00:37:39,187
He cannot look away from this
591
00:37:39,257 --> 00:37:44,227
walking, talking tragedy of injustice.
592
00:37:46,125 --> 00:37:49,439
The crux of the case is
whether excessive and unnecessary force
593
00:37:49,508 --> 00:37:54,755
was used in regard to Isaac Woodard.
594
00:37:54,824 --> 00:37:56,619
The police chief claimed
595
00:37:56,688 --> 00:38:01,106
"I only hit him once, I don't
know how he got blinded."
596
00:38:01,175 --> 00:38:05,490
But how do you crush the globes
of both eyes with one strike?
597
00:38:09,839 --> 00:38:11,910
The government
finished presenting its case
598
00:38:11,979 --> 00:38:16,052
against Shull after just an hour
and 25 minutes.
599
00:38:16,121 --> 00:38:19,573
The prosecutors had not called
witnesses who had seen
600
00:38:19,642 --> 00:38:22,852
the attack unfold,
or presented any evidence
601
00:38:22,921 --> 00:38:25,337
about Chief Shull's pattern
of violence against
602
00:38:25,406 --> 00:38:29,307
the Black citizens of Batesburg.
603
00:38:29,376 --> 00:38:31,550
As the prosecution rested,
604
00:38:31,619 --> 00:38:34,208
Franklin Williams sat in the courtroom,
605
00:38:34,277 --> 00:38:37,349
furiously scrawling notes.
606
00:38:40,973 --> 00:38:42,837
It was going
to be a difficult case to win,
607
00:38:42,906 --> 00:38:44,770
but even given that,
608
00:38:44,839 --> 00:38:49,982
the Department of Justice acted
with incompetence.
609
00:38:50,051 --> 00:38:54,435
They failed to call key witnesses.
610
00:38:54,504 --> 00:38:59,267
They let the defense lawyers
examine the jury pool
611
00:38:59,337 --> 00:39:01,166
and asked them whether
they'd been members...
612
00:39:01,235 --> 00:39:02,650
all these white people...
613
00:39:02,719 --> 00:39:05,377
asked them whether they'd been
members of the N.A.A.C.P.
614
00:39:05,446 --> 00:39:07,345
I mean they never asked them
whether they'd been members
615
00:39:07,414 --> 00:39:08,415
of the Ku Klux Klan.
616
00:39:10,969 --> 00:39:14,662
They were just sort of
incompetent from top to bottom.
617
00:39:14,731 --> 00:39:16,388
There's a reason for that.
618
00:39:16,457 --> 00:39:18,459
This is not a case
that the Justice Department
619
00:39:18,528 --> 00:39:19,874
wanted to bring.
620
00:39:19,943 --> 00:39:23,533
And at trial, they showed that
their heart was not in it.
621
00:39:23,602 --> 00:39:26,674
Judge Waring was
horrified that he was made part
622
00:39:26,743 --> 00:39:28,331
of this travesty.
623
00:39:28,400 --> 00:39:32,059
He sends the jury out to deliberate,
624
00:39:32,128 --> 00:39:34,164
and he tells his assistant
United States marshal,
625
00:39:34,233 --> 00:39:36,339
"I'll be back in a few minutes.
626
00:39:36,408 --> 00:39:41,896
And the bewildered marshal says,
"Your Honor, you can't leave.
627
00:39:41,965 --> 00:39:45,590
This jury is going to be back
in five minutes."
628
00:39:45,659 --> 00:39:47,212
He says, "They're not
coming back in five minutes
629
00:39:47,281 --> 00:39:49,352
because I won't be here."
630
00:39:52,044 --> 00:39:57,084
He was not going to allow a jury
to do a five-minute verdict,
631
00:39:57,153 --> 00:40:00,052
which he thought would just be
the capstone
632
00:40:00,121 --> 00:40:03,228
of a great injustice.
633
00:40:03,297 --> 00:40:04,712
That part he controlled,
634
00:40:04,781 --> 00:40:07,715
and he made them sit in that
room and stew in their juices,
635
00:40:07,784 --> 00:40:09,303
until he got back.
636
00:40:12,133 --> 00:40:14,791
Judge Waring walks down Main
Street to the state capitol,
637
00:40:14,860 --> 00:40:17,932
and when he comes back 25 minutes later,
638
00:40:18,001 --> 00:40:19,555
they're banging on that door.
639
00:40:19,624 --> 00:40:21,557
They've been banging on it for 20 minutes
640
00:40:21,626 --> 00:40:24,111
and they come out and they announce
641
00:40:24,180 --> 00:40:26,354
the acquittal of Lynwood Shull.
642
00:40:33,431 --> 00:40:35,812
An exhausted Isaac
Woodard had already retreated
643
00:40:35,881 --> 00:40:40,058
back to his hotel
when he received the news.
644
00:40:40,127 --> 00:40:44,027
He wept, then collected himself,
645
00:40:44,096 --> 00:40:47,306
and stepped outside to face reporters.
646
00:40:48,791 --> 00:40:52,622
"I'm not mad at anybody," he told them.
647
00:40:52,691 --> 00:40:54,382
"I just feel bad.
648
00:40:54,452 --> 00:40:57,040
"That's all.
649
00:40:57,109 --> 00:40:59,180
I just feel bad."
650
00:41:09,984 --> 00:41:12,849
Inside the courthouse,
Judge Waring hastily packed up
651
00:41:12,918 --> 00:41:16,474
his briefcase and then hurried
to meet his wife, Elizabeth,
652
00:41:16,543 --> 00:41:19,787
whom he found badly shaken.
653
00:41:19,856 --> 00:41:22,859
She had attended the trial.
654
00:41:22,928 --> 00:41:25,413
And she found
655
00:41:25,483 --> 00:41:30,936
the facts of the case
astonishing, cruel, vicious.
656
00:41:31,005 --> 00:41:34,768
When the jury came back
and acquitted Shull,
657
00:41:34,837 --> 00:41:36,424
no one noticed that she slipped
658
00:41:36,494 --> 00:41:39,462
out of the back of the courtroom in tears.
659
00:41:41,982 --> 00:41:48,160
She was profoundly
moved by the testimony of Isaac Woodard,
660
00:41:48,229 --> 00:41:53,269
about what had happened to him
at the hands of Chief Shull.
661
00:41:53,338 --> 00:41:57,653
She said she had never seen,
never appreciated,
662
00:41:57,722 --> 00:42:02,761
never understood that these
sorts of things could happen.
663
00:42:07,732 --> 00:42:12,460
Elizabeth Avery Waring
was from a well-to-do family in Michigan
664
00:42:12,530 --> 00:42:15,463
and had only come South late in life.
665
00:42:17,431 --> 00:42:19,433
Like Waties, she had never paid
much attention
666
00:42:19,502 --> 00:42:24,334
to the racial caste system
in and around Charleston.
667
00:42:28,097 --> 00:42:30,340
Charleston, a gracious old city,
668
00:42:30,409 --> 00:42:32,826
where memories and traditions
live and thrive
669
00:42:32,895 --> 00:42:34,690
in a congenial air.
670
00:42:37,106 --> 00:42:40,385
Everywhere is an old time,
almost an old world,
671
00:42:40,454 --> 00:42:42,076
charm and quaintness.
672
00:42:48,324 --> 00:42:50,844
And everywhere, of course, the Negroes.
673
00:42:52,500 --> 00:42:54,606
The real Negro quarters
in Charleston may not boast
674
00:42:54,675 --> 00:42:57,678
classic colonial architecture
in all its flower,
675
00:42:57,747 --> 00:42:59,646
but it has a quaintness all its own.
676
00:43:02,545 --> 00:43:05,065
The Southern system
of segregation wasn't just
677
00:43:05,134 --> 00:43:06,756
some benign system that
678
00:43:06,825 --> 00:43:11,381
whites and Blacks acceded to
and everybody was happy.
679
00:43:16,766 --> 00:43:18,492
It was a violent system.
680
00:43:20,977 --> 00:43:23,359
It was based on violence.
681
00:43:23,428 --> 00:43:24,671
If you got out of line,
682
00:43:24,740 --> 00:43:26,845
there was violent repression,
683
00:43:26,914 --> 00:43:30,124
and Woodard exemplified that.
684
00:43:30,193 --> 00:43:31,436
You know, for someone like Waring,
685
00:43:31,505 --> 00:43:34,232
he'd spent his whole life ignoring that.
686
00:43:34,301 --> 00:43:39,582
"I couldn't take it,
at first," Waring would later admit.
687
00:43:39,651 --> 00:43:42,378
"I used to say it couldn't be true.
688
00:43:42,447 --> 00:43:46,451
"You grow up in it
and the moss gets in your eyes.
689
00:43:46,520 --> 00:43:51,387
"You learn to rationalize away
the evil and filth
690
00:43:51,456 --> 00:43:55,909
and you see magnolias instead."
691
00:43:55,978 --> 00:43:58,739
There is a willful blindness, frankly,
692
00:43:58,808 --> 00:44:02,812
among most white people
about the truth of racism
693
00:44:02,881 --> 00:44:04,469
and white supremacy in this country.
694
00:44:08,404 --> 00:44:10,268
There is some ignorance because,
of course,
695
00:44:10,337 --> 00:44:12,615
we live very segregated lives,
696
00:44:12,684 --> 00:44:16,792
but it's right to say how could
he possibly not have known?
697
00:44:16,861 --> 00:44:19,380
He could not have known because
698
00:44:19,449 --> 00:44:24,420
to be a comfortable middle-class
white person in this country
699
00:44:24,489 --> 00:44:28,010
generally involves
refusing to see what is hiding
700
00:44:28,079 --> 00:44:30,115
in plain sight.
701
00:44:32,393 --> 00:44:37,122
The trial shattered
their illusion about the benign nature
702
00:44:37,191 --> 00:44:39,331
of Southern life.
703
00:44:41,333 --> 00:44:44,992
And, once shattered, where do they go?
704
00:44:45,061 --> 00:44:51,171
There was just no tolerance
in Southern society of that day,
705
00:44:51,240 --> 00:44:54,795
to any honest discussion about race.
706
00:44:54,864 --> 00:44:59,662
Any questioning of Jim Crow was
viewed by the segregationists
707
00:44:59,731 --> 00:45:03,459
as an existential threat.
708
00:45:03,528 --> 00:45:05,944
There was no course on this.
709
00:45:06,013 --> 00:45:09,292
They certainly didn't know of
anyone in Charleston
710
00:45:09,361 --> 00:45:12,330
that could help them better understand,
711
00:45:12,399 --> 00:45:17,507
so the two of them begin a series of study
712
00:45:17,576 --> 00:45:21,270
on race relations in the South.
713
00:45:21,339 --> 00:45:23,272
They take in books
every night, they read them,
714
00:45:23,341 --> 00:45:26,240
and then they have sessions
after dinner where they ask
715
00:45:26,309 --> 00:45:28,898
each other questions, and they basically
716
00:45:28,967 --> 00:45:31,901
create their own personal seminar to try
717
00:45:31,970 --> 00:45:33,869
to understand racism in America.
718
00:45:38,977 --> 00:45:41,531
The Warings started
with two groundbreaking new works
719
00:45:41,600 --> 00:45:44,949
that examined the origins and
the impact of white supremacy
720
00:45:45,018 --> 00:45:49,608
in the South: W.J. Cash's book,
"The Mind of the South,"
721
00:45:49,677 --> 00:45:53,267
and Gunnar Myrdal's
"An American Dilemma."
722
00:45:53,336 --> 00:45:55,580
Both books destroyed the comforting story
723
00:45:55,649 --> 00:45:57,996
white Southerners
liked to tell themselves:
724
00:45:58,065 --> 00:46:01,310
that slavery and Jim Crow had always been
725
00:46:01,379 --> 00:46:03,105
paternal institutions
726
00:46:03,174 --> 00:46:06,971
and that the "Negro" had long
lived under the protections
727
00:46:07,040 --> 00:46:08,800
of a benevolent master race.
728
00:46:13,909 --> 00:46:16,981
Both made plain that white
moderates, like Waring himself,
729
00:46:17,050 --> 00:46:20,432
were complicit in this racist,
violent system.
730
00:46:20,501 --> 00:46:24,333
These are important
books, they're complicated books,
731
00:46:24,402 --> 00:46:26,714
they're challenging books.
732
00:46:26,784 --> 00:46:32,099
Judge Waring described them
as tough medicine for him.
733
00:46:32,168 --> 00:46:35,758
They rode through different neighborhoods
734
00:46:35,827 --> 00:46:38,934
and began to see the different ways
735
00:46:39,003 --> 00:46:42,316
that white Charlestonians
and Black Charlestonians
736
00:46:42,385 --> 00:46:45,872
experienced life in the city.
737
00:46:50,359 --> 00:46:53,258
As they began to read,
738
00:46:53,327 --> 00:46:55,916
and understand, and question
739
00:46:55,985 --> 00:46:59,678
all that they've thought about
race in the past,
740
00:46:59,747 --> 00:47:04,407
it becomes clear to both of them
that the road ahead
741
00:47:04,476 --> 00:47:07,686
is going to be a rocky road,
742
00:47:07,755 --> 00:47:10,758
but that this just may be the road
743
00:47:10,828 --> 00:47:14,486
that they are uniquely prepared to follow.
744
00:47:18,697 --> 00:47:21,977
Looking askance at Charleston
society wasn't such a great leap
745
00:47:22,046 --> 00:47:23,668
for either of the Warings,
746
00:47:23,737 --> 00:47:26,084
who had been increasingly
feeling like outsiders
747
00:47:26,153 --> 00:47:28,293
in their own hometown.
748
00:47:30,882 --> 00:47:33,851
Just the previous year,
Judge Waring had scandalized
749
00:47:33,920 --> 00:47:36,405
his friends and neighbors
by abruptly announcing
750
00:47:36,474 --> 00:47:39,339
to his first wife, Annie,
that he'd fallen in love
751
00:47:39,408 --> 00:47:42,307
with their bridge partner, Elizabeth.
752
00:47:44,378 --> 00:47:47,934
Divorce was not only
frowned upon in South Carolina;
753
00:47:48,003 --> 00:47:50,522
it was illegal.
754
00:47:50,591 --> 00:47:53,422
But Waring devised a plan
to send Annie to Florida,
755
00:47:53,491 --> 00:47:57,702
where she could legally
petition for divorce.
756
00:47:57,771 --> 00:48:00,947
A week after the dissolution
of his marriage to Annie,
757
00:48:01,016 --> 00:48:04,847
Waties and Elizabeth were wed.
758
00:48:06,297 --> 00:48:07,436
Their friends in Charleston...
759
00:48:07,505 --> 00:48:08,886
we're talking about
a couple hundred people,
760
00:48:08,955 --> 00:48:10,991
the sort of social set in Charleston...
761
00:48:11,060 --> 00:48:17,204
they blame Elizabeth
for the breakup of the marriage.
762
00:48:17,273 --> 00:48:21,657
Elizabeth, a
Northerner now on her third marriage,
763
00:48:21,726 --> 00:48:25,385
was an easy target
for Charleston's society dames,
764
00:48:25,454 --> 00:48:28,664
who branded her a "floozie"
and told their children,
765
00:48:28,733 --> 00:48:32,806
"You may be polite if the new
Mrs. Waring speaks to you,
766
00:48:32,875 --> 00:48:35,188
but never address her."
767
00:48:35,257 --> 00:48:38,674
The judge noted that even
his oldest friends
768
00:48:38,743 --> 00:48:41,746
crossed the street to avoid him.
769
00:48:41,815 --> 00:48:44,887
They clearly
were surprised by their treatment
770
00:48:44,956 --> 00:48:47,027
because they both had been
very engaged in the social life
771
00:48:47,096 --> 00:48:49,857
in Charleston.
772
00:48:49,927 --> 00:48:53,620
And having been read out of
Charleston's high society,
773
00:48:53,689 --> 00:48:56,519
he was prepared to look
more critically at the world
774
00:48:56,588 --> 00:49:00,178
in which he had previously lived
and accepted unquestionably.
775
00:49:10,740 --> 00:49:12,950
By the end of 1946,
776
00:49:13,019 --> 00:49:16,781
a racial reckoning in the
United States seemed inevitable.
777
00:49:16,850 --> 00:49:21,096
Like the Warings,
President Harry Truman felt
778
00:49:21,165 --> 00:49:24,306
called to respond to the
blinding of Isaac Woodard
779
00:49:24,375 --> 00:49:27,343
and the mockery it made of the principles
780
00:49:27,412 --> 00:49:31,554
America had just defended
in a long and brutal war.
781
00:49:31,623 --> 00:49:35,593
But political forces had left
Truman with limited power
782
00:49:35,662 --> 00:49:39,045
to take action against white supremacy.
783
00:49:43,463 --> 00:49:46,500
On the same day Woodard's
assailant walked free,
784
00:49:46,569 --> 00:49:48,916
November 5, 1946,
785
00:49:48,986 --> 00:49:51,402
the president absorbed
a stunning repudiation
786
00:49:51,471 --> 00:49:52,955
at the polls.
787
00:49:53,024 --> 00:49:56,752
Democrats lost both the House
and the Senate
788
00:49:56,821 --> 00:49:59,962
for the first time in a generation.
789
00:50:00,031 --> 00:50:04,656
Forcing the question of
civil rights, Truman understood,
790
00:50:04,725 --> 00:50:08,660
was likely to weaken the party further.
791
00:50:08,729 --> 00:50:12,250
Harry Truman
has to deal with political realities,
792
00:50:12,319 --> 00:50:14,770
and the realities are
that the Democratic Party
793
00:50:14,839 --> 00:50:18,946
is an unwieldy coalition
794
00:50:19,016 --> 00:50:21,708
including white Southerners,
who are staunchly segregationist
795
00:50:21,777 --> 00:50:23,951
and supporters of white supremacy,
796
00:50:24,021 --> 00:50:29,164
and this new and growing group
of African-American voters.
797
00:50:29,233 --> 00:50:35,135
Truman knows that any move
that he makes on civil rights,
798
00:50:35,204 --> 00:50:39,829
he risks alienating
Southern white Democrats.
799
00:50:39,898 --> 00:50:43,833
But at this moment,
800
00:50:43,902 --> 00:50:48,942
when he sees a representative
of the United States,
801
00:50:49,011 --> 00:50:55,224
a soldier in uniform,
Isaac Woodard, who is maimed...
802
00:50:55,293 --> 00:50:57,192
it sounds simplistic,
but I think something
803
00:50:57,261 --> 00:50:59,711
just kind of clicks in him,
that this simply cannot stand.
804
00:51:02,369 --> 00:51:05,821
We hold ourselves up
as the beacon of democracy.
805
00:51:05,890 --> 00:51:08,893
We hold ourselves up as moral leaders.
806
00:51:08,962 --> 00:51:13,898
Moral leaders do not blind
their own servicemen.
807
00:51:19,973 --> 00:51:22,251
On December 5, 1946,
808
00:51:22,320 --> 00:51:25,737
one month after the acquittal
of Isaac Woodard's attacker,
809
00:51:25,806 --> 00:51:28,982
Harry Truman signed
an executive order establishing
810
00:51:29,051 --> 00:51:32,019
the President's Committee on Civil Rights.
811
00:51:32,089 --> 00:51:35,851
The president charged his new
committee with laying bare
812
00:51:35,920 --> 00:51:39,268
hard truths about the
intimidation and violence used
813
00:51:39,337 --> 00:51:41,857
to enforce racial segregation,
814
00:51:41,926 --> 00:51:45,861
and with recommending concrete
measures to safeguard
815
00:51:45,930 --> 00:51:48,208
the rights of every American,
816
00:51:48,277 --> 00:51:51,384
regardless of race, creed, or religion.
817
00:51:53,558 --> 00:51:56,872
Harry Truman is a politician,
818
00:51:56,941 --> 00:52:01,463
and political considerations
are never far from
819
00:52:01,532 --> 00:52:04,466
the ambit of a politician's decisions.
820
00:52:06,468 --> 00:52:09,160
But there were certain actions
he took which could not be
821
00:52:09,229 --> 00:52:13,337
explained on the basis
of political advantage.
822
00:52:13,406 --> 00:52:16,857
He appointed the President's
Committee on Civil Rights,
823
00:52:16,926 --> 00:52:21,207
I think, probably more for moral
reasons than anything else.
824
00:52:21,276 --> 00:52:22,242
He saw injustice.
825
00:52:22,311 --> 00:52:23,347
He was outraged by it.
826
00:52:23,416 --> 00:52:25,349
He thought that he should do something.
827
00:52:25,418 --> 00:52:30,250
And given Truman's background,
it undoubtedly was a surprise
828
00:52:30,319 --> 00:52:33,874
to civil rights advocates.
829
00:52:33,943 --> 00:52:36,049
Truman said many
things that were absolutely racist
830
00:52:36,118 --> 00:52:37,775
and indefensible.
831
00:52:37,844 --> 00:52:41,744
They were what we would consider
of the time for a white man
832
00:52:41,813 --> 00:52:44,402
from Missouri.
833
00:52:44,471 --> 00:52:47,888
But Truman saw no contradiction
between these personal views
834
00:52:47,957 --> 00:52:51,823
and what he saw as
America's legal obligations
835
00:52:51,892 --> 00:52:53,480
to its citizens.
836
00:52:53,549 --> 00:52:55,931
That it does not matter
what you personally feel,
837
00:52:56,000 --> 00:52:57,691
whom you would have to your home
for dinner,
838
00:52:57,760 --> 00:52:59,659
or whom you would have
a glass of bourbon with
839
00:52:59,728 --> 00:53:00,867
at the end of the day.
840
00:53:00,936 --> 00:53:03,594
What matters is that
these people have rights
841
00:53:03,663 --> 00:53:04,836
under the constitution
842
00:53:04,905 --> 00:53:08,185
because this is
the United States of America.
843
00:53:18,574 --> 00:53:23,096
♪ Lift every voice and sing ♪
844
00:53:23,165 --> 00:53:27,825
♪ Lift every voice and sing ♪
845
00:53:27,894 --> 00:53:33,279
On a brutally hot,
humid day at the end of June 1947,
846
00:53:33,348 --> 00:53:37,697
an audience of 10,000...
many of them African American...
847
00:53:37,766 --> 00:53:42,840
gathered on the Capitol Mall
in a state of high anticipation.
848
00:53:50,261 --> 00:53:52,608
Harry Truman was about to do
849
00:53:52,677 --> 00:53:56,819
what no United States president
had ever done.
850
00:53:56,888 --> 00:54:00,720
He had accepted an invitation
from Walter White
851
00:54:00,789 --> 00:54:03,861
to address the annual convention
of the N.A.A.C.P.
852
00:54:03,930 --> 00:54:06,829
at the base of the Lincoln Memorial.
853
00:54:06,898 --> 00:54:13,974
The N.A.A.C.P.
was considered a radical organization.
854
00:54:14,043 --> 00:54:16,183
Some Southern politicians considered it
855
00:54:16,253 --> 00:54:19,532
a Communist front organization.
856
00:54:19,601 --> 00:54:21,258
I mean, if you were a member
857
00:54:21,327 --> 00:54:24,778
of the N.A.A.C.P. in the South
and you were a school teacher,
858
00:54:24,847 --> 00:54:26,711
you were probably going to get fired.
859
00:54:26,780 --> 00:54:31,129
And to have Harry Truman
go in front and speak
860
00:54:31,198 --> 00:54:35,341
to the N.A.A.C.P.
was a remarkable moment.
861
00:54:35,410 --> 00:54:41,450
He had multiple drafts of the speech done.
862
00:54:41,519 --> 00:54:43,280
He was editing it himself,
863
00:54:43,349 --> 00:54:46,731
and he wrote a letter
to his sister, and he says,
864
00:54:46,800 --> 00:54:48,319
"I'm getting ready to give a speech
865
00:54:48,388 --> 00:54:50,252
that Mama isn't going to like."
866
00:54:50,321 --> 00:54:53,428
Mrs. Roosevelt,
867
00:54:53,497 --> 00:54:55,602
Senator Morris,
868
00:54:55,671 --> 00:54:58,743
distinguished guests,
ladies and gentlemen,
869
00:54:58,812 --> 00:55:01,884
I should like to talk to you briefly
870
00:55:01,953 --> 00:55:06,233
about civil rights and human freedom.
871
00:55:06,303 --> 00:55:09,202
It is more important today
872
00:55:09,271 --> 00:55:13,137
than ever before to ensure
873
00:55:13,206 --> 00:55:17,935
that all Americans enjoy these rights.
874
00:55:20,627 --> 00:55:25,598
When I say all Americans,
I mean all Americans.
875
00:55:33,813 --> 00:55:36,263
The theme can be summed up in two words
876
00:55:36,333 --> 00:55:38,714
that Truman used several times
in the speech,
877
00:55:38,783 --> 00:55:40,440
which was only 12 minutes long.
878
00:55:40,509 --> 00:55:42,753
And those two words are
"all Americans."
879
00:55:42,822 --> 00:55:45,272
He kept repeating the phrase
"all Americans."
880
00:55:45,342 --> 00:55:51,865
There is no justifiable reason
for discrimination
881
00:55:51,934 --> 00:55:57,975
because of ancestry,
or religion, or race, or color.
882
00:56:01,841 --> 00:56:06,155
We cannot any longer await
the growth of a will to action
883
00:56:06,224 --> 00:56:10,194
in the slowest state
or the most backward community.
884
00:56:13,473 --> 00:56:17,857
Our national government must show the way.
885
00:56:21,895 --> 00:56:24,864
It was a stunning speech.
886
00:56:24,933 --> 00:56:28,350
And when he sat down, Walter
White, sitting next to him,
887
00:56:28,419 --> 00:56:31,353
is in disbelief.
888
00:56:31,422 --> 00:56:34,425
And he said,
"Mr. President, I just...
889
00:56:34,494 --> 00:56:36,531
I can't believe
what you just said."
890
00:56:36,600 --> 00:56:39,603
And he said, "Walter,
I meant every word of it."
891
00:56:51,062 --> 00:56:55,342
Judge J. Waties Waring
had become increasingly convinced
892
00:56:55,412 --> 00:56:59,554
that a bitter fight over racism
was coming to South Carolina.
893
00:56:59,623 --> 00:57:04,351
He would later remember that he
was faced with two choices:
894
00:57:04,421 --> 00:57:06,388
"Either you were going to be governed by
895
00:57:06,457 --> 00:57:09,115
"the white supremacy doctrine
and just shut your eyes
896
00:57:09,184 --> 00:57:11,358
"and bowl this thing through,
897
00:57:11,428 --> 00:57:13,706
"or you were going to be a federal judge
898
00:57:13,775 --> 00:57:17,951
and decide the law...
that was the issue."
899
00:57:19,953 --> 00:57:24,337
A judge
doesn't normally go and pick his cases,
900
00:57:24,406 --> 00:57:26,270
but Judge Waring tells his clerk,
901
00:57:26,339 --> 00:57:29,963
"Keep an eye open
for new civil rights cases.
902
00:57:30,032 --> 00:57:31,482
Let me know when they have
occurred."
903
00:57:34,623 --> 00:57:36,314
That evening, Waties told Elizabeth about
904
00:57:36,383 --> 00:57:38,420
an explosive new case he was considering
905
00:57:38,489 --> 00:57:39,801
for his trial docket.
906
00:57:42,666 --> 00:57:44,806
The case, Elmore v. Rice,
907
00:57:44,875 --> 00:57:47,084
had originated when George Elmore,
908
00:57:47,153 --> 00:57:49,017
a prosperous Black businessman,
909
00:57:49,086 --> 00:57:52,123
had been told by the
South Carolina Democratic Party
910
00:57:52,192 --> 00:57:55,713
that he was ineligible to vote
in the upcoming primary.
911
00:57:58,820 --> 00:58:01,547
Denying Elmore the right to vote
was in direct violation
912
00:58:01,616 --> 00:58:04,204
of the Supreme Court's 1944 ruling
913
00:58:04,273 --> 00:58:08,830
in Smith v. Allwright, which
banned the whites-only primary.
914
00:58:11,488 --> 00:58:14,007
When you win a
Supreme Court case like that,
915
00:58:14,076 --> 00:58:16,769
what is supposed to happen
is everyone is supposed
916
00:58:16,838 --> 00:58:19,392
to comply with the judgment of the court.
917
00:58:19,461 --> 00:58:20,945
South Carolina doesn't.
918
00:58:21,014 --> 00:58:23,361
The South Carolina Democratic
Party says, "Well,
919
00:58:23,430 --> 00:58:25,294
"you know, that may be what
the Supreme Court said
920
00:58:25,363 --> 00:58:27,296
"but they must've been talking to Texas.
921
00:58:27,365 --> 00:58:28,263
They couldn't have been
talking to us."
922
00:58:32,439 --> 00:58:36,133
South Carolina's segregationist
Democrats adopted the strategy
923
00:58:36,202 --> 00:58:39,446
of willful ignorance for a reason.
924
00:58:39,516 --> 00:58:43,209
The Black population in
South Carolina stood
925
00:58:43,278 --> 00:58:47,316
at roughly 40 percent,
second only to Mississippi's.
926
00:58:47,385 --> 00:58:50,630
And that was a lot of potential voters
927
00:58:50,699 --> 00:58:53,426
who might start demanding equal rights.
928
00:59:00,847 --> 00:59:03,747
So even though the Supreme Court
had left no wiggle room
929
00:59:03,816 --> 00:59:06,819
in striking down the all-white primary,
930
00:59:06,888 --> 00:59:10,305
the white power structure in the
state executed a spectacular
931
00:59:10,374 --> 00:59:14,171
end run around the ruling.
932
00:59:14,240 --> 00:59:19,452
It repealed every
law on the books relating to the primary
933
00:59:19,521 --> 00:59:22,559
and then claimed the 14th Amendment
934
00:59:22,628 --> 00:59:24,940
did not apply to the Democratic
Party of South Carolina,
935
00:59:25,009 --> 00:59:26,563
because there was no state action.
936
00:59:26,632 --> 00:59:29,186
This was a private club having
an election.
937
00:59:31,015 --> 00:59:33,811
Voting is really the
lynchpin of the rest of the system.
938
00:59:33,880 --> 00:59:36,918
Whites have to be in power
939
00:59:36,987 --> 00:59:39,817
to control the mechanisms of the state.
940
00:59:39,886 --> 00:59:42,302
To do that, they have
to suppress Black voting.
941
00:59:44,822 --> 00:59:47,825
So, Elmore, for Judge Waring,
942
00:59:47,894 --> 00:59:52,071
is going to involve a direct
challenge to the system
943
00:59:52,140 --> 00:59:57,421
of Southern repression,
domination, and segregation,
944
00:59:57,490 --> 01:00:01,494
unlike almost all of the cases
that came before it.
945
01:00:05,532 --> 01:00:07,949
So Judge Waring said to Elizabeth,
946
01:00:08,018 --> 01:00:11,159
"I need to tell you I've taken this case.
947
01:00:11,228 --> 01:00:12,609
"And we, up to this point,
948
01:00:12,678 --> 01:00:14,611
"we've been doing this kind
of privately, we haven't
949
01:00:14,680 --> 01:00:17,096
"really been discussing
our views with others.
950
01:00:17,165 --> 01:00:20,030
"But if I rule for Mr. Elmore,
951
01:00:20,099 --> 01:00:22,619
our lives will never
be the same."
952
01:00:22,688 --> 01:00:26,830
Elizabeth looked at him
and said, "You go for it.
953
01:00:26,899 --> 01:00:29,073
"It's the right thing to do.
954
01:00:29,142 --> 01:00:33,215
I will be with you
every step of the way."
955
01:00:37,875 --> 01:00:41,914
In June of 1947,
J. Waties Waring headed back
956
01:00:41,983 --> 01:00:44,813
to the same courtroom where
Isaac Woodard's testimony
957
01:00:44,882 --> 01:00:48,575
had so shaken him
just eight months earlier,
958
01:00:48,645 --> 01:00:51,440
this time to hear
Elmore v. Rice.
959
01:00:51,509 --> 01:00:56,687
Representing George Elmore were
the N.A.A.C.P.'s top attorneys,
960
01:00:56,756 --> 01:01:01,312
Thurgood Marshall and Robert Carter.
961
01:01:01,381 --> 01:01:05,592
In court, attorneys for
the South Carolina Democrats
962
01:01:05,662 --> 01:01:07,664
expounded their novel argument:
963
01:01:07,733 --> 01:01:11,357
the Democratic Party was a private club,
964
01:01:11,426 --> 01:01:13,566
and enjoyed the right
to restrict its membership
965
01:01:13,635 --> 01:01:15,154
as it saw fit.
966
01:01:15,223 --> 01:01:17,397
The federal court had no more business
967
01:01:17,466 --> 01:01:19,848
directing their elections
than it did directing
968
01:01:19,917 --> 01:01:23,231
a ladies sewing circle.
969
01:01:23,300 --> 01:01:25,026
Judge Waring was not impressed.
970
01:01:27,166 --> 01:01:30,928
If you are a judge, and a
judge who's now awakening
971
01:01:30,997 --> 01:01:33,206
to the reality of white supremacy
972
01:01:33,275 --> 01:01:35,864
and racial discrimination,
as Waties Waring is,
973
01:01:35,933 --> 01:01:38,902
you understand that this case
actually constitutes
974
01:01:38,971 --> 01:01:41,801
an opportunity to talk about the
role of the Supreme Court
975
01:01:41,870 --> 01:01:44,631
in relationship to Southern states,
976
01:01:44,701 --> 01:01:48,118
the way in which political power
is harnessed and controlled
977
01:01:48,187 --> 01:01:51,915
as part of white supremacy,
and as a way to talk about
978
01:01:51,984 --> 01:01:54,503
what the power of local judges are
979
01:01:54,572 --> 01:01:58,162
to stop white supremacists in the South
980
01:01:58,231 --> 01:02:00,578
from carrying out their plans.
981
01:02:03,202 --> 01:02:06,584
Waring issued his ruling on July 12, 1947,
982
01:02:06,653 --> 01:02:09,139
just two weeks after Truman's appearance
983
01:02:09,208 --> 01:02:12,970
at the national convention
of the N.A.A.C.P.
984
01:02:13,039 --> 01:02:17,734
He found for Elmore, quoting
directly from Truman's speech:
985
01:02:17,803 --> 01:02:21,082
"We can no longer afford the
luxury of a leisurely attack
986
01:02:21,151 --> 01:02:23,636
"upon prejudice and discrimination.
987
01:02:23,705 --> 01:02:27,467
"We cannot, any longer, await
the growth of a will to action
988
01:02:27,536 --> 01:02:31,955
in the slowest state
or the most backward community."
989
01:02:32,024 --> 01:02:34,060
He says it's a joke.
990
01:02:34,129 --> 01:02:36,131
It's a ridiculous argument.
991
01:02:36,200 --> 01:02:39,341
Private clubs do not elect the
president of the United States.
992
01:02:39,410 --> 01:02:44,864
And he finished the order
with a resounding call
993
01:02:44,933 --> 01:02:46,003
for his South Carolinians.
994
01:02:46,072 --> 01:02:48,143
He said, "It is time
995
01:02:48,212 --> 01:02:51,181
"for South Carolina to rejoin the union
996
01:02:51,250 --> 01:02:55,530
and to adopt the American way
of conducting elections."
997
01:02:55,599 --> 01:02:58,188
There was no effort to uphold
998
01:02:58,257 --> 01:03:02,226
the nobility of Southern white
supremacy, right?
999
01:03:02,295 --> 01:03:04,470
He's calling it out for what it is.
1000
01:03:18,967 --> 01:03:23,006
For Judge Waring,
standing as a figure alone
1001
01:03:23,075 --> 01:03:28,459
in a deeply entrenched Southern community,
1002
01:03:28,528 --> 01:03:31,428
it is his farewell.
1003
01:03:31,497 --> 01:03:34,396
It's his farewell to the society
in which he grew up
1004
01:03:34,465 --> 01:03:39,677
and it marks an articulation
of his decision to go it alone
1005
01:03:39,746 --> 01:03:42,059
with his wife in that community.
1006
01:03:49,756 --> 01:03:51,137
The
Southern revolt against President Truman
1007
01:03:51,206 --> 01:03:52,138
reaches its climax at Birmingham,
1008
01:03:52,207 --> 01:03:53,899
under the States' Rights banner.
1009
01:03:53,968 --> 01:03:56,487
More than 6,000 flock
to the rump convention
1010
01:03:56,556 --> 01:03:58,696
to select the presidential ticket.
1011
01:03:58,765 --> 01:04:00,906
Thirteen Southern states are represented
1012
01:04:00,975 --> 01:04:03,253
in the uproarious session,
which precedes the nomination
1013
01:04:03,322 --> 01:04:04,910
of Governors Thurmond of South Carolina,
1014
01:04:04,979 --> 01:04:07,015
and Fielding Wright of Mississippi
1015
01:04:07,084 --> 01:04:08,534
as party standard bearers.
1016
01:04:12,745 --> 01:04:15,092
By the time the
next election season arrived,
1017
01:04:15,161 --> 01:04:18,199
a huge swath of Southern
Democrats had had enough
1018
01:04:18,268 --> 01:04:21,340
of what they called
"federal intrusion."
1019
01:04:21,409 --> 01:04:26,483
Segregationists had held sway
in local politics for decades,
1020
01:04:26,552 --> 01:04:28,588
and they didn't intend to be pushed around
1021
01:04:28,657 --> 01:04:30,452
by the United States Supreme Court,
1022
01:04:30,521 --> 01:04:34,111
or federal judges
like J. Waties Waring,
1023
01:04:34,180 --> 01:04:38,564
or even the president.
1024
01:04:40,566 --> 01:04:43,362
Good-bye Harry, good-bye Harry!
1025
01:04:45,226 --> 01:04:48,885
At the 1948
Democratic National Convention,
1026
01:04:48,954 --> 01:04:51,784
Dixiecrats walk out
over the civil rights plank
1027
01:04:51,853 --> 01:04:55,339
prompted by President Truman's
actions, originally,
1028
01:04:55,408 --> 01:04:58,377
and Strom Thurmond runs
as a presidential candidate
1029
01:04:58,446 --> 01:04:59,826
on behalf of the Dixiecrats.
1030
01:05:02,760 --> 01:05:07,593
In the words of John Paul Jones,
"We have just begun to fight!"
1031
01:05:10,976 --> 01:05:13,633
There are
thousands of white people in attendance.
1032
01:05:13,702 --> 01:05:19,225
The hall is decorated in
red, white, and blue bunting.
1033
01:05:19,294 --> 01:05:22,401
It is festooned with Confederate flags.
1034
01:05:22,470 --> 01:05:27,233
People are holding aloft
pictures of Robert E. Lee.
1035
01:05:27,302 --> 01:05:30,340
There's no question as to sort of
1036
01:05:30,409 --> 01:05:33,412
the animating spirit of this group,
1037
01:05:33,481 --> 01:05:37,002
which is to return the South to the past,
1038
01:05:37,071 --> 01:05:39,521
to maintain the racial status quo,
1039
01:05:39,590 --> 01:05:42,352
to maintain white supremacy.
1040
01:05:42,421 --> 01:05:45,734
It's another effort on the part
of this president
1041
01:05:45,803 --> 01:05:51,948
to dominate the country by force
and to put into effect
1042
01:05:52,017 --> 01:05:56,642
these uncalled for and these
damnable proposals
1043
01:05:56,711 --> 01:06:00,542
he has recommended under the
guise of so-called civil rights.
1044
01:06:00,611 --> 01:06:03,511
And I tell you the American
people, from one side
1045
01:06:03,580 --> 01:06:08,136
or the other, had better wake up
and oppose such a program.
1046
01:06:08,205 --> 01:06:10,311
And if they don't, the next thing will be
1047
01:06:10,380 --> 01:06:13,176
a totalitarian state
in these United States.
1048
01:06:15,833 --> 01:06:17,421
The Dixiecrats,
1049
01:06:17,490 --> 01:06:19,872
their goal is to be a spoiler,
1050
01:06:19,941 --> 01:06:23,876
to deny either major party a majority
1051
01:06:23,945 --> 01:06:25,602
of electoral college votes,
1052
01:06:25,671 --> 01:06:27,880
thereby throwing the election
1053
01:06:27,949 --> 01:06:31,366
into the House of
Representatives, where they can
1054
01:06:31,435 --> 01:06:35,267
use their power to win
concessions on civil rights.
1055
01:06:39,581 --> 01:06:42,964
Truman didn't blink,
and he didn't retreat.
1056
01:06:43,033 --> 01:06:46,795
Nine days after the Dixiecrat revolt,
1057
01:06:46,864 --> 01:06:49,212
he gave the States Righters
a little primer
1058
01:06:49,281 --> 01:06:50,592
in presidential power.
1059
01:06:52,042 --> 01:06:53,802
Truman signed an executive order
1060
01:06:53,871 --> 01:06:56,219
desegregating the federal workforce
1061
01:06:56,288 --> 01:06:58,773
and, more shockingly,
1062
01:06:58,842 --> 01:07:01,776
the entirety of the
United States Armed Forces.
1063
01:07:04,296 --> 01:07:06,608
Desegregating the military is something
1064
01:07:06,677 --> 01:07:08,886
that Truman could do with a
stroke of a pen.
1065
01:07:08,955 --> 01:07:11,820
He does it because he's already seen
1066
01:07:11,889 --> 01:07:14,858
the worst that Southerners are
going to do, right?
1067
01:07:14,927 --> 01:07:18,482
They've already staged a revolt,
so why not go all in?
1068
01:07:18,551 --> 01:07:24,695
A lifelong friend
writes him a letter and says, "Harry,
1069
01:07:24,764 --> 01:07:27,560
"get off this civil rights thing.
1070
01:07:27,629 --> 01:07:30,598
If you don't do it, you're going
to lose the election."
1071
01:07:30,667 --> 01:07:33,325
Truman writes him a letter back
1072
01:07:33,394 --> 01:07:35,361
and says,
"You don't know what I know."
1073
01:07:37,329 --> 01:07:41,574
He then tells him the story of
the blinding of Isaac Woodard.
1074
01:07:41,643 --> 01:07:44,612
He mentions these other
atrocities as well,
1075
01:07:44,681 --> 01:07:50,031
and he says, "If I lose the
election over this issue,
1076
01:07:50,100 --> 01:07:51,653
it will have been for
a good cause."
1077
01:07:54,311 --> 01:07:59,247
In that way, President Truman
and Judge Waring are the same.
1078
01:07:59,316 --> 01:08:02,837
Every instinct of political
survival should have told
1079
01:08:02,906 --> 01:08:06,461
both of them to keep their hand
off the hotspot of the oven.
1080
01:08:06,530 --> 01:08:10,224
Both of them went to the hotspot.
1081
01:08:19,612 --> 01:08:23,133
As the 1948 primary approached,
1082
01:08:23,202 --> 01:08:26,378
South Carolina Democrats
were brazenly evading
1083
01:08:26,447 --> 01:08:28,138
Waring's decision in Elmore...
1084
01:08:30,451 --> 01:08:34,179
allowing Black South Carolinians
to register to vote
1085
01:08:34,248 --> 01:08:36,353
only after they signed an oath
1086
01:08:36,422 --> 01:08:40,702
declaring their opposition
to racial integration.
1087
01:08:49,884 --> 01:08:52,058
Waring summoned nearly a hundred officials
1088
01:08:52,128 --> 01:08:54,992
of the South Carolina Democratic Party
1089
01:08:55,061 --> 01:08:56,925
and ordered them to register
Black citizens
1090
01:08:56,994 --> 01:09:00,446
without swearing any oath.
1091
01:09:00,515 --> 01:09:04,070
He tells them that a federal judge
1092
01:09:04,140 --> 01:09:07,384
faced with contempt has two choices.
1093
01:09:07,453 --> 01:09:13,252
He can impose a fine or a prison sentence.
1094
01:09:13,321 --> 01:09:16,152
He says, "If you violate my order again,
1095
01:09:16,221 --> 01:09:18,223
there will be no fines."
1096
01:09:20,156 --> 01:09:24,781
The message that he was prepared
to jail white men
1097
01:09:24,850 --> 01:09:28,060
for depriving African Americans
the right to vote
1098
01:09:28,129 --> 01:09:33,272
hit the white establishment
like a thunderbolt.
1099
01:09:41,867 --> 01:09:43,869
Threatening letters
began arriving at the courthouse
1100
01:09:43,938 --> 01:09:47,044
and at Judge Waring's home soon after.
1101
01:09:48,529 --> 01:09:51,463
Obscene calls came into
his phone line so frequently
1102
01:09:51,532 --> 01:09:54,259
that he was forced to disconnect
his service.
1103
01:09:56,675 --> 01:09:59,988
White Southerners, as much as they despise
1104
01:10:00,057 --> 01:10:02,784
African Americans
and despise civil rights,
1105
01:10:02,853 --> 01:10:07,133
they often level the most venom
against people
1106
01:10:07,203 --> 01:10:09,757
they think are traitors,
and that would be Waring.
1107
01:10:13,795 --> 01:10:15,901
The Warings
lived their lives more and more
1108
01:10:15,970 --> 01:10:18,524
on their own terms.
1109
01:10:18,593 --> 01:10:20,733
Neighbors were particularly scandalized
1110
01:10:20,802 --> 01:10:23,633
by the unlikely visitors
that were seen calling
1111
01:10:23,702 --> 01:10:26,291
at 61 Meeting Street.
1112
01:10:26,360 --> 01:10:28,569
They became friendly with a number
1113
01:10:28,638 --> 01:10:31,468
of African-American activists.
1114
01:10:31,537 --> 01:10:36,335
Septima Clark, who was a fiery
advocate for civil rights,
1115
01:10:36,404 --> 01:10:37,957
was very close with the Warings,
1116
01:10:38,026 --> 01:10:40,477
was a frequent visitor
in the house at a time
1117
01:10:40,546 --> 01:10:42,583
that Black people only entered
1118
01:10:42,652 --> 01:10:45,448
the homes of white people
through the back door as maids.
1119
01:10:45,517 --> 01:10:49,210
Ruby Cornwell was the matriarch
of the civil rights community
1120
01:10:49,279 --> 01:10:50,901
in Charleston.
1121
01:10:50,970 --> 01:10:54,250
She was a frequent visitor
and a close friend.
1122
01:10:54,319 --> 01:10:57,045
But perhaps the most interesting
relationship
1123
01:10:57,114 --> 01:10:58,909
that Judge Waring develops
1124
01:10:58,978 --> 01:11:02,810
is a close, personal
relationship with Walter White...
1125
01:11:02,879 --> 01:11:06,331
then the most important civil
rights leader in America.
1126
01:11:06,400 --> 01:11:09,575
The Warings just got to the point,
1127
01:11:09,644 --> 01:11:12,302
they didn't care what other
people thought.
1128
01:11:12,371 --> 01:11:15,857
There's a very famous photograph
of the Warings,
1129
01:11:15,926 --> 01:11:18,170
featured in "Collier's" magazine,
1130
01:11:18,239 --> 01:11:21,311
that showed a dinner party
at the Warings' house.
1131
01:11:21,380 --> 01:11:24,280
The article was titled,
"The Lonesomest Man in Town,"
1132
01:11:24,349 --> 01:11:26,212
but he didn't look that lonesome.
1133
01:11:26,282 --> 01:11:30,803
He had lots of friends
at his dinner table.
1134
01:11:30,872 --> 01:11:34,186
The only notable part was they
were all African American.
1135
01:11:34,255 --> 01:11:38,673
They're socializing, they're laughing,
1136
01:11:38,742 --> 01:11:44,196
they're enjoying each other's
friendship as equals,
1137
01:11:44,265 --> 01:11:48,614
and that was terrifying
to white Charlestonians.
1138
01:11:48,683 --> 01:11:52,515
Elizabeth's willingness
to flout the social conventions
1139
01:11:52,584 --> 01:11:57,174
of Charleston society and her
candor about Southern racism
1140
01:11:57,243 --> 01:11:59,625
brought unprecedented national attention
1141
01:11:59,694 --> 01:12:02,248
to the wife of a sitting federal judge.
1142
01:12:06,252 --> 01:12:10,360
She found her voice.
1143
01:12:10,429 --> 01:12:14,399
And she put white Charlestonians
1144
01:12:14,468 --> 01:12:18,161
on notice that that was going
to be a voice that
1145
01:12:18,230 --> 01:12:20,474
she would not hesitate to use.
1146
01:12:22,959 --> 01:12:24,926
She was invited,
1147
01:12:24,995 --> 01:12:28,102
one of the first women,
to come on "Meet the Press."
1148
01:12:28,171 --> 01:12:31,001
Tonight from Washington,
D.C., this is J. Waties Waring
1149
01:12:31,070 --> 01:12:32,796
of Charleston, South Carolina,
1150
01:12:32,865 --> 01:12:35,281
wife of federal Judge Waring
who stirred up a hornet's nest
1151
01:12:35,351 --> 01:12:38,733
in the South by her vigorous
attack on white supremacy.
1152
01:12:38,802 --> 01:12:40,977
Mrs. Waring, you charged in your speech
1153
01:12:41,046 --> 01:12:43,359
before the YWCA group in Charleston
1154
01:12:43,428 --> 01:12:45,947
that the whites down here are a sick,
1155
01:12:46,016 --> 01:12:48,398
confused, and decadent people,
1156
01:12:48,467 --> 01:12:51,436
and that like all decadent
people, they are full of pride
1157
01:12:51,505 --> 01:12:55,681
and complacency, introverted,
morally weak, and low.
1158
01:12:55,750 --> 01:12:58,788
What brought you to this
drastic conclusion?
1159
01:12:58,857 --> 01:13:01,618
Living there and observing them,
1160
01:13:01,687 --> 01:13:04,345
a very deep study of the subject.
1161
01:13:04,414 --> 01:13:10,524
Any people who enslave the minds
and bodies of another people
1162
01:13:10,593 --> 01:13:14,873
are bound to destroy their own souls.
1163
01:13:14,942 --> 01:13:17,151
In ordinary circumstances,
1164
01:13:17,220 --> 01:13:21,120
the spouse of a judge would
not do what she did.
1165
01:13:21,189 --> 01:13:24,400
But given the depth of the problem,
1166
01:13:24,469 --> 01:13:26,988
the importance that somebody speak out,
1167
01:13:27,057 --> 01:13:29,266
she felt as though she should.
1168
01:13:29,335 --> 01:13:33,270
Are you crusading
only for the Negro's civil rights,
1169
01:13:33,339 --> 01:13:36,929
such as the freedom to vote,
freedom of safety of his person,
1170
01:13:36,998 --> 01:13:39,587
and freedom from lynching,
and so forth, or are you
1171
01:13:39,656 --> 01:13:42,003
for social integration,
is that what you want, too?
1172
01:13:42,072 --> 01:13:45,282
I want the whole thing...
I want him to go through the same door,
1173
01:13:45,351 --> 01:13:48,009
and so does the judge... I want
him to be an equal citizen.
1174
01:13:52,773 --> 01:13:56,639
Reaction in South
Carolina was swift and predictable.
1175
01:13:56,708 --> 01:13:59,400
State legislators appropriated $10,000
1176
01:13:59,469 --> 01:14:02,541
to fund impeachment of the judge,
1177
01:14:02,610 --> 01:14:04,440
then resolved to purchase railroad tickets
1178
01:14:04,509 --> 01:14:06,752
for the Warings, anywhere they desired,
1179
01:14:06,821 --> 01:14:11,688
as long as it was out of the
state with no return.
1180
01:14:11,757 --> 01:14:14,242
Two men were seen burning a
Ku Klux Klan cross
1181
01:14:14,311 --> 01:14:16,210
in the Warings' back garden.
1182
01:14:16,279 --> 01:14:19,006
And on a quiet evening,
1183
01:14:19,075 --> 01:14:21,146
while the Warings were home
playing canasta
1184
01:14:21,215 --> 01:14:24,287
in their drawing room,
three shots rang out
1185
01:14:24,356 --> 01:14:25,737
in front of their home.
1186
01:14:28,878 --> 01:14:32,916
Their home is right on the street
1187
01:14:32,985 --> 01:14:34,677
and they're inside
1188
01:14:34,746 --> 01:14:39,716
and suddenly two big bricks
come through the window.
1189
01:14:42,581 --> 01:14:45,101
They don't know if people are
coming through the window
1190
01:14:45,170 --> 01:14:47,690
and through the doors next.
1191
01:14:47,759 --> 01:14:50,037
But they're petrified.
1192
01:14:50,106 --> 01:14:52,039
They retreat to their dining room
1193
01:14:52,108 --> 01:14:53,972
where they're hiding behind a wall,
1194
01:14:54,041 --> 01:14:57,354
believing that they are under fire.
1195
01:14:57,423 --> 01:15:01,151
And within days, the
United States Attorney General
1196
01:15:01,220 --> 01:15:04,327
provided 24-hour
U.S. Marshal protection...
1197
01:15:04,396 --> 01:15:07,744
literally, marshals sleeping out
in front of his house...
1198
01:15:07,813 --> 01:15:09,401
throughout the rest of his service
1199
01:15:09,470 --> 01:15:11,265
as a United States district judge.
1200
01:15:11,334 --> 01:15:15,925
No federal judge had ever faced
such an attack.
1201
01:15:18,272 --> 01:15:22,379
The judge, 70
years old and under constant siege,
1202
01:15:22,448 --> 01:15:26,004
understood his days on the bench
were numbered.
1203
01:15:26,073 --> 01:15:27,419
He confided in Elizabeth
1204
01:15:27,488 --> 01:15:32,666
that he meant to do one
big thing before he retired.
1205
01:15:32,735 --> 01:15:35,358
With her support, he fixed his sights
1206
01:15:35,427 --> 01:15:38,844
on destroying the precedent that
had underpinned legalized racism
1207
01:15:38,913 --> 01:15:42,089
in the South for more than 50 years:
1208
01:15:42,158 --> 01:15:46,300
the strange doctrine of
"separate but equal."
1209
01:15:48,060 --> 01:15:53,445
They are disgusted by the people
1210
01:15:53,514 --> 01:15:57,380
who have been their friends
and who have sat idly by
1211
01:15:57,449 --> 01:16:00,314
and benefited from this oppressive system.
1212
01:16:00,383 --> 01:16:04,007
And they simply can't take it anymore.
1213
01:16:04,076 --> 01:16:05,664
And he is now in this position
1214
01:16:05,733 --> 01:16:07,873
where he can do something about it.
1215
01:16:07,942 --> 01:16:09,495
What the record now shows us,
1216
01:16:09,565 --> 01:16:11,567
at the time in which the most
intense pressure
1217
01:16:11,636 --> 01:16:13,327
was being put on Judge Waring,
1218
01:16:13,396 --> 01:16:17,573
he was making the plans of what
would become
1219
01:16:17,642 --> 01:16:22,854
the Briggs v. Elliott dissent...
the case that changes America.
1220
01:16:25,995 --> 01:16:27,997
This is South Carolina...
1221
01:16:28,066 --> 01:16:29,515
Summerton, South Carolina...
1222
01:16:29,585 --> 01:16:32,449
a country crossroads in the rich soil,
1223
01:16:32,518 --> 01:16:34,555
isolated in time and space,
1224
01:16:34,624 --> 01:16:37,938
and given to old ways...
but not always uncritically.
1225
01:16:38,007 --> 01:16:41,148
Here, perhaps more than
elsewhere in the United States,
1226
01:16:41,217 --> 01:16:43,875
the racial patterns, the social patterns,
1227
01:16:43,944 --> 01:16:47,913
the economic patterns
are all the same pattern.
1228
01:16:51,641 --> 01:16:52,849
Briggs v. Elliott...
1229
01:16:52,918 --> 01:16:55,093
the case that would set in motion
1230
01:16:55,162 --> 01:16:57,405
the demise of legalized segregation...
1231
01:16:57,474 --> 01:17:01,237
grew from the unlikeliest soil
in the nation.
1232
01:17:03,998 --> 01:17:06,863
Clarendon County, just 90-odd miles
1233
01:17:06,932 --> 01:17:09,176
from where Isaac Woodard had been beaten,
1234
01:17:09,245 --> 01:17:12,144
was a place well known to Judge Waring.
1235
01:17:12,213 --> 01:17:15,458
"It's in what we call the Low Country,"
1236
01:17:15,527 --> 01:17:17,425
he said of Clarendon.
1237
01:17:17,494 --> 01:17:20,118
"Swamp lands and rivers.
1238
01:17:20,187 --> 01:17:24,674
"One of the most backward
counties of the state.
1239
01:17:24,743 --> 01:17:29,645
"The Negro schools were just
tumbledown, dirty shacks
1240
01:17:29,714 --> 01:17:34,063
with horrible outdoor
toilet facilities."
1241
01:17:34,132 --> 01:17:36,824
I lived in Summerton
and I cursed the day I was born
1242
01:17:36,893 --> 01:17:38,550
and had to live there.
1243
01:17:38,619 --> 01:17:41,864
And I vowed that when I got grown,
1244
01:17:41,933 --> 01:17:44,936
I'd never see that damn place again.
1245
01:17:46,731 --> 01:17:50,631
They have
talked about us as being subhuman.
1246
01:17:50,700 --> 01:17:52,875
I guess from generation to generation,
1247
01:17:52,944 --> 01:17:56,395
they couldn't accept the fact
that I'm human just like them,
1248
01:17:56,464 --> 01:17:57,500
just like them.
1249
01:18:01,849 --> 01:18:03,023
Most of the schools
1250
01:18:03,092 --> 01:18:06,129
operated for three to four
months out of the year.
1251
01:18:06,198 --> 01:18:09,167
And the reason for that was
1252
01:18:09,236 --> 01:18:11,583
these kids need to be in, in the fields
1253
01:18:11,652 --> 01:18:15,207
plowing cotton, or whatever.
1254
01:18:15,276 --> 01:18:18,486
So we can't have
school when they need to work
1255
01:18:18,555 --> 01:18:20,523
to get our cotton out of the fields.
1256
01:18:22,145 --> 01:18:23,768
Some of the kids
in my class didn't show up
1257
01:18:23,837 --> 01:18:25,701
till around Thanksgiving.
1258
01:18:25,770 --> 01:18:27,530
Instead of being in school,
1259
01:18:27,599 --> 01:18:31,258
they was out working the farm.
1260
01:18:31,327 --> 01:18:34,502
Come early April, these kids
are out of the school,
1261
01:18:34,571 --> 01:18:37,540
going back to the farm to work.
1262
01:18:37,609 --> 01:18:39,369
And the system really didn't care.
1263
01:18:41,061 --> 01:18:44,685
It was not meant for us as
Black folks, but two things:
1264
01:18:44,754 --> 01:18:49,000
go in somebody's kitchen,
or go in somebody's fields.
1265
01:18:49,069 --> 01:18:52,313
That happened to us
a hundred years or more.
1266
01:18:52,382 --> 01:18:54,005
That's what was geared for us to do.
1267
01:18:54,074 --> 01:18:55,558
They didn't expect no more from you.
1268
01:19:00,183 --> 01:19:03,739
In 1947, local parents in Clarendon County
1269
01:19:03,808 --> 01:19:05,879
decided to do something about the problem
1270
01:19:05,948 --> 01:19:09,020
of simply getting their children
to school.
1271
01:19:10,504 --> 01:19:11,712
There was a fleet of buses
1272
01:19:11,781 --> 01:19:15,026
for the white children in the county...
1273
01:19:15,095 --> 01:19:17,407
None for the Black children.
1274
01:19:20,790 --> 01:19:22,481
Some of the
Black children in their community
1275
01:19:22,550 --> 01:19:24,967
have to walk nine miles to school.
1276
01:19:28,487 --> 01:19:31,559
They have to ford a river.
1277
01:19:35,563 --> 01:19:38,049
A group of
Summerton parents were able to raise
1278
01:19:38,118 --> 01:19:41,984
several hundred dollars
to buy a used school bus,
1279
01:19:42,053 --> 01:19:44,918
but the bus broke down constantly.
1280
01:19:44,987 --> 01:19:49,888
So the parents turned
to the Reverend J.A. DeLaine,
1281
01:19:49,957 --> 01:19:54,410
a principal and minister
with ties to the N.A.A.C.P.
1282
01:19:54,479 --> 01:20:00,830
He suggested, "We'll
go in and we'll talk to the superintendent
1283
01:20:00,899 --> 01:20:07,043
"of schools about getting funds
for gas money, repair the bus,
1284
01:20:07,112 --> 01:20:10,564
and pay a salary
to who drives the bus."
1285
01:20:10,633 --> 01:20:12,083
It was turned down.
1286
01:20:12,152 --> 01:20:14,464
"Ain't got no money
for you niggers."
1287
01:20:17,122 --> 01:20:20,436
Literally, is what they...
what he was told.
1288
01:20:23,059 --> 01:20:28,271
It was told that Black
folks didn't pay enough taxes.
1289
01:20:28,340 --> 01:20:30,791
You couldn't even vote.
1290
01:20:30,860 --> 01:20:34,208
So there was no Black folks on
the school board to direct
1291
01:20:34,277 --> 01:20:38,903
and to address the issues
that was at hand.
1292
01:20:38,972 --> 01:20:40,180
So what power do you have?
1293
01:20:42,147 --> 01:20:45,875
My father then
said, "Well, you know, let's file a suit."
1294
01:20:47,808 --> 01:20:51,570
I want to talk with Thurgood Marshall.
1295
01:20:53,676 --> 01:20:56,403
Thurgood Marshall, the 40-year-old chief
1296
01:20:56,472 --> 01:20:59,199
of the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense
Fund,
1297
01:20:59,268 --> 01:21:03,306
reluctantly answered the summons
from Clarendon County.
1298
01:21:09,002 --> 01:21:13,454
All through the 1940s, Marshall
had been making these trips
1299
01:21:13,523 --> 01:21:16,699
from New York into the heart
of the Jim Crow South.
1300
01:21:16,768 --> 01:21:20,185
He had been belittled by judges
and opposing counsel
1301
01:21:20,254 --> 01:21:22,878
who didn't think he could be an attorney,
1302
01:21:22,947 --> 01:21:26,985
threatened with violence,
and nearly lynched.
1303
01:21:29,815 --> 01:21:33,371
White Americans
who want to maintain segregation
1304
01:21:33,440 --> 01:21:36,892
recognize that Thurgood Marshall
and his legal team are becoming
1305
01:21:36,961 --> 01:21:41,034
very effective at chipping
away at that status quo.
1306
01:21:41,103 --> 01:21:43,933
And that is why his life is in
danger whenever he travels,
1307
01:21:44,002 --> 01:21:46,039
particularly when he travels in the South.
1308
01:21:49,628 --> 01:21:51,251
They would have to move him
1309
01:21:51,320 --> 01:21:52,908
around from house to house at night
1310
01:21:52,977 --> 01:21:55,462
during a trial because the Klan
was after him,
1311
01:21:55,531 --> 01:21:57,119
and they didn't want these Night Riders
1312
01:21:57,188 --> 01:21:58,396
to find out where Marshall was.
1313
01:22:00,777 --> 01:22:03,780
He was threatened constantly,
his life was always in danger...
1314
01:22:05,472 --> 01:22:07,784
and he was terrified, too.
1315
01:22:07,853 --> 01:22:09,683
But he also knew that it was important
1316
01:22:09,752 --> 01:22:11,374
for the African American communities
1317
01:22:11,443 --> 01:22:12,755
in those Jim Crow balconies
1318
01:22:12,824 --> 01:22:15,931
to look down and see an African American
1319
01:22:16,000 --> 01:22:18,692
who was not a defendant,
who was in a suit,
1320
01:22:18,761 --> 01:22:21,591
who was arguing the law with white men.
1321
01:22:25,871 --> 01:22:27,597
It was often an electric experience
1322
01:22:27,666 --> 01:22:30,152
for local African American
communities to see
1323
01:22:30,221 --> 01:22:33,569
Thurgood Marshall come to town
because he would do something
1324
01:22:33,638 --> 01:22:37,055
that nobody had ever seen before,
1325
01:22:37,124 --> 01:22:40,679
which was to address white
people and to make them answer
1326
01:22:40,748 --> 01:22:43,441
and state reasons for what
they were doing,
1327
01:22:43,510 --> 01:22:46,064
and to sometimes call them liars.
1328
01:22:47,859 --> 01:22:50,068
Marshall leveled with the Reverend DeLaine
1329
01:22:50,137 --> 01:22:53,244
and the parents of Clarendon County.
1330
01:22:53,313 --> 01:22:56,488
If the N.A.A.C.P. was going to
take on their case,
1331
01:22:56,557 --> 01:23:00,561
it was going to be about more
than a school bus.
1332
01:23:00,630 --> 01:23:03,979
He wanted to sue for total
equality with the white schools.
1333
01:23:04,048 --> 01:23:07,327
Facilities, teacher salaries,
textbooks, buses...
1334
01:23:07,396 --> 01:23:09,501
every resource the white schools had,
1335
01:23:09,570 --> 01:23:14,058
they would demand in equal
measure for the Black schools.
1336
01:23:14,127 --> 01:23:17,095
Marshall explained he wouldn't
even consider taking the case
1337
01:23:17,164 --> 01:23:21,306
until he had 20 reliable,
credible plaintiffs,
1338
01:23:21,375 --> 01:23:24,482
people who would not cower in
the face of certain intimidation
1339
01:23:24,551 --> 01:23:29,176
from the white supremacists
who ruled Clarendon County.
1340
01:23:29,245 --> 01:23:33,077
More than 20 Black citizens
agreed to sign on.
1341
01:23:46,987 --> 01:23:49,610
On November 17, 1950,
1342
01:23:49,679 --> 01:23:52,165
Thurgood Marshall hurried along
Charleston's
1343
01:23:52,234 --> 01:23:55,099
palmetto-lined streets for a
pre-trial hearing
1344
01:23:55,168 --> 01:23:56,721
with Judge Waring,
1345
01:23:56,790 --> 01:23:59,793
unaware that the judge had been
closely following
1346
01:23:59,862 --> 01:24:02,589
events in Summerton.
1347
01:24:02,658 --> 01:24:04,073
Neither man harbored any doubts
1348
01:24:04,142 --> 01:24:06,075
about the strength of Marshall's case:
1349
01:24:06,144 --> 01:24:10,562
The N.A.A.C.P. was clearly
poised to win equal facilities
1350
01:24:10,631 --> 01:24:13,876
for the Black children
of Clarendon County.
1351
01:24:16,154 --> 01:24:18,570
The schools for white
children were generally the best schools
1352
01:24:18,639 --> 01:24:21,366
that the tax base
could establish and support.
1353
01:24:23,472 --> 01:24:24,956
The schools for Black children,
1354
01:24:25,025 --> 01:24:27,786
even in some middle class school
districts,
1355
01:24:27,855 --> 01:24:30,548
mocked the very notion of being schools.
1356
01:24:30,617 --> 01:24:32,860
They were visibly unequal
to the naked eye.
1357
01:24:32,929 --> 01:24:34,483
One need not even step inside
1358
01:24:34,552 --> 01:24:36,105
to see how unequal they were.
1359
01:24:38,280 --> 01:24:40,420
When Marshall arrives at the courthouse,
1360
01:24:40,489 --> 01:24:42,146
he is told by court personnel,
1361
01:24:42,215 --> 01:24:46,426
Judge Waring wants to see you
in his chambers.
1362
01:24:46,495 --> 01:24:50,361
Lawyers call this ex-parte
communication... it happened.
1363
01:24:50,430 --> 01:24:53,881
Judge Waring says to Marshall,
1364
01:24:53,950 --> 01:24:57,782
"I don't want to try any more
equalization cases.
1365
01:24:57,851 --> 01:25:00,371
Bring me a frontal challenge
to segregation."
1366
01:25:05,100 --> 01:25:09,518
Thurgood Marshall
is absolutely floored when Waring
1367
01:25:09,587 --> 01:25:13,487
essentially tells him, "Look,
I need you to make this case,
1368
01:25:13,556 --> 01:25:16,559
get rid of segregation
altogether."
1369
01:25:16,628 --> 01:25:18,768
He basically tells Marshall,
1370
01:25:18,837 --> 01:25:20,529
"Look, you need to go
for broke here."
1371
01:25:23,152 --> 01:25:25,844
Thurgood Marshall
had dedicated much of his life
1372
01:25:25,913 --> 01:25:29,227
to overturning legalized segregation.
1373
01:25:29,296 --> 01:25:31,885
But he was playing the long game,
1374
01:25:31,954 --> 01:25:35,440
executing a strategy
he had helped to devise
1375
01:25:35,509 --> 01:25:38,133
15 years earlier.
1376
01:25:38,202 --> 01:25:40,652
Segregation had been sanctioned
1377
01:25:40,721 --> 01:25:43,655
by an 1896 Supreme Court decision
1378
01:25:43,724 --> 01:25:47,935
in a case called
Plessy v. Ferguson.
1379
01:25:48,004 --> 01:25:51,215
Homer Plessy,
a Black man from New Orleans,
1380
01:25:51,284 --> 01:25:53,631
had challenged the segregated
accommodations
1381
01:25:53,700 --> 01:25:59,671
of Louisiana's railroads and lost 8-1.
1382
01:25:59,740 --> 01:26:01,259
Plessy v. Ferguson
1383
01:26:01,328 --> 01:26:05,608
came to be seen as symbolic of the idea of
1384
01:26:05,677 --> 01:26:06,747
separate but equal,
1385
01:26:06,816 --> 01:26:11,787
that segregation was not unconstitutional
1386
01:26:11,856 --> 01:26:16,516
as long as Blacks and whites
were given equal facilities.
1387
01:26:16,585 --> 01:26:22,280
The
N.A.A.C.P. had adopted this strategy,
1388
01:26:22,349 --> 01:26:27,043
which is basically turning
Plessy v. Ferguson on its head.
1389
01:26:27,112 --> 01:26:31,151
It's a kind of sailing
west to arrive east.
1390
01:26:31,220 --> 01:26:35,328
Rather than argue against the
scourge of Plessy,
1391
01:26:35,397 --> 01:26:37,606
they argued for the fulfillment
of Plessy...
1392
01:26:37,675 --> 01:26:39,918
that the constitution
is not being satisfied,
1393
01:26:39,987 --> 01:26:41,886
not because the facilities are segregated,
1394
01:26:41,955 --> 01:26:43,301
but because they're unequal.
1395
01:26:43,370 --> 01:26:45,959
They were winning cases,
1396
01:26:46,028 --> 01:26:50,032
but the strategy had controversy
because every time
1397
01:26:50,101 --> 01:26:54,105
you use Plessy to support your theory,
1398
01:26:54,174 --> 01:26:57,764
you were driving another nail
1399
01:26:57,833 --> 01:27:02,941
into the inferior legal status
of African Americans.
1400
01:27:03,010 --> 01:27:05,979
The question that faced Marshall was,
1401
01:27:06,048 --> 01:27:09,638
when do we move away from the
equalization strategy
1402
01:27:09,707 --> 01:27:12,399
and begin to argue that separate but equal
1403
01:27:12,468 --> 01:27:15,230
is unconstitutional?
1404
01:27:15,299 --> 01:27:20,890
And Marshall was rightly
cautious about when and where
1405
01:27:20,959 --> 01:27:22,651
to make that claim,
1406
01:27:22,720 --> 01:27:26,482
because if he chose the wrong case
1407
01:27:26,551 --> 01:27:28,967
and it went to the Supreme Court,
1408
01:27:29,036 --> 01:27:31,176
the worst thing that could
happen for Black Americans
1409
01:27:31,246 --> 01:27:33,040
across the country would be for
the Supreme Court
1410
01:27:33,109 --> 01:27:38,183
to ratify Plessy v. Ferguson...
to confirm it in a new age
1411
01:27:38,253 --> 01:27:40,634
and say, "Yes, this is still
the law of the land
1412
01:27:40,703 --> 01:27:42,395
and it satisfies the
constitution."
1413
01:27:42,464 --> 01:27:48,711
What Judge Waring
was pushing him to do was very risky.
1414
01:27:48,780 --> 01:27:53,268
If you launched a concerted
effort to overturn Plessy
1415
01:27:53,337 --> 01:27:58,514
and failed, your years of all
that work would have been thrown
1416
01:27:58,583 --> 01:28:01,137
on the trash heap of history.
1417
01:28:01,206 --> 01:28:03,864
Thurgood Marshall says,
"Judge, it's on our agenda.
1418
01:28:03,933 --> 01:28:07,212
"It's just not tonight,
this is not the time.
1419
01:28:07,282 --> 01:28:09,284
This is not the place. ”
1420
01:28:09,353 --> 01:28:11,113
What he wasn't saying explicitly was,
1421
01:28:11,182 --> 01:28:13,046
this is the last place in
the world we're going to try
1422
01:28:13,115 --> 01:28:15,497
to desegregate the schools.
1423
01:28:15,566 --> 01:28:19,708
This is down the end of the
road, not the beginning.
1424
01:28:19,777 --> 01:28:23,228
Judge Waring said, "This is the time.
1425
01:28:23,298 --> 01:28:24,644
"This is the case.
1426
01:28:24,713 --> 01:28:27,854
"You're gonna be challenging
the constitutionality
1427
01:28:27,923 --> 01:28:29,304
"of a state law.
1428
01:28:29,373 --> 01:28:30,788
"You're going to lose,
1429
01:28:30,857 --> 01:28:34,895
but you'll plant the case
directly and automatically
1430
01:28:34,964 --> 01:28:37,139
"onto the docket of the U.S.
Supreme Court.
1431
01:28:37,208 --> 01:28:39,797
And he said, "Thurgood,
that's where you want to be."
1432
01:28:42,317 --> 01:28:45,009
At Waring's
urging, Marshall petitioned the court
1433
01:28:45,078 --> 01:28:48,012
to dismiss the current case
and bring a new suit,
1434
01:28:48,081 --> 01:28:50,117
one alleging that segregation
1435
01:28:50,186 --> 01:28:54,363
in South Carolina's public
schools was unconstitutional.
1436
01:28:54,432 --> 01:28:59,644
Marshall and his team spent the
next month preparing to refile.
1437
01:28:59,713 --> 01:29:01,163
But they also needed approval
1438
01:29:01,232 --> 01:29:04,200
from the plaintiffs to move ahead.
1439
01:29:04,269 --> 01:29:06,996
Marshall was always
very powerfully conscious
1440
01:29:07,065 --> 01:29:09,413
of the risks being taken by plaintiffs.
1441
01:29:09,482 --> 01:29:12,139
And if you knew anything about
Clarendon County in that period,
1442
01:29:12,208 --> 01:29:16,178
you knew that the Briggs
and others who stood up
1443
01:29:16,247 --> 01:29:19,284
to the system in that
jurisdiction were going
1444
01:29:19,354 --> 01:29:20,320
to have hell to pay.
1445
01:29:23,599 --> 01:29:26,361
The week before Christmas, 1950,
1446
01:29:26,430 --> 01:29:29,640
dozens of parents, students,
and teachers filed into
1447
01:29:29,709 --> 01:29:32,470
St. Mark A.M.E. Church
in Summerton,
1448
01:29:32,539 --> 01:29:35,818
ready to hear an update on their
case from Robert Carter,
1449
01:29:35,887 --> 01:29:38,959
Marshall's key deputy.
1450
01:29:39,028 --> 01:29:41,617
The place was packed to the rafters.
1451
01:29:41,686 --> 01:29:44,171
Mr. Carter explained that
1452
01:29:44,240 --> 01:29:47,036
the N.A.A.C.P. thought it was
time to attack segregation,
1453
01:29:47,105 --> 01:29:48,831
root and branch,
1454
01:29:48,900 --> 01:29:51,593
but that anyone who was a
plaintiff in the case
1455
01:29:51,662 --> 01:29:55,010
needed to understand they could
experience severe retaliation.
1456
01:29:55,079 --> 01:29:58,151
He said, "Mr. Marshall
wants you to know that.
1457
01:29:58,220 --> 01:30:01,810
You can withdraw."
1458
01:30:01,879 --> 01:30:05,917
That was made clear to the petitioners...
1459
01:30:05,986 --> 01:30:08,679
if you think you're experiencing
retribution now,
1460
01:30:08,748 --> 01:30:11,095
if this case come from here,
1461
01:30:11,164 --> 01:30:14,132
there's gonna probably be more
reprisals that will come
1462
01:30:14,201 --> 01:30:15,651
and don't know what form it would take.
1463
01:30:17,584 --> 01:30:20,863
This was no great
revelation to the Reverend DeLaine,
1464
01:30:20,932 --> 01:30:23,383
or to the Navy veteran Harry Briggs,
1465
01:30:23,452 --> 01:30:25,247
whose name was on the legal filing
1466
01:30:25,316 --> 01:30:28,146
simply because he was first up
in the alphabet.
1467
01:30:28,215 --> 01:30:30,286
Or to any of the other petitioners
1468
01:30:30,355 --> 01:30:33,600
who had signed onto the original lawsuit.
1469
01:30:33,669 --> 01:30:36,361
What Marshall had warned about
nearly two years earlier
1470
01:30:36,431 --> 01:30:38,018
had come to pass.
1471
01:30:38,087 --> 01:30:39,813
Did your husband sign this petition?
1472
01:30:39,882 --> 01:30:41,125
Yes, he did sign the petition.
1473
01:30:41,194 --> 01:30:42,885
What happened to him after that?
1474
01:30:42,954 --> 01:30:45,888
Right after he signed the
petition, he told him that,
1475
01:30:45,957 --> 01:30:48,615
unless he take his name off it,
he would lose his job.
1476
01:30:48,684 --> 01:30:52,308
On Christmas Eve,
they gave him a carton of cigarettes
1477
01:30:52,377 --> 01:30:55,208
and said we got somebody to replace you.
1478
01:30:55,277 --> 01:30:58,556
Then money dries up.
1479
01:30:58,625 --> 01:31:00,731
Couldn't get work.
1480
01:31:00,800 --> 01:31:03,630
He took a pseudonym to get paid.
1481
01:31:03,699 --> 01:31:06,737
Because they wasn't gonna hire
Harry Briggs in the county.
1482
01:31:06,806 --> 01:31:08,842
What did you tell him?
1483
01:31:08,911 --> 01:31:11,224
Well, I told I him we was...
we only doing it
1484
01:31:11,293 --> 01:31:14,054
for the betterment of the children.
1485
01:31:14,123 --> 01:31:16,332
Mm-hmm. Not only our children,
1486
01:31:16,401 --> 01:31:18,093
but all of the children.
1487
01:31:23,788 --> 01:31:25,928
There were a lot of evictions.
1488
01:31:28,206 --> 01:31:31,520
My father was threatened.
1489
01:31:31,589 --> 01:31:37,940
The Black men in town had formed
themselves into a cadre
1490
01:31:38,009 --> 01:31:41,254
guarding our house at night with guns.
1491
01:31:43,981 --> 01:31:46,224
Reverend Delaine, he had his home burned,
1492
01:31:46,293 --> 01:31:48,330
with volunteer firemen standing out front
1493
01:31:48,399 --> 01:31:51,471
refusing to provide service.
1494
01:31:51,540 --> 01:31:54,612
They did that to send a message, you know.
1495
01:31:54,681 --> 01:31:56,338
And when his house caught
on fire, we thought
1496
01:31:56,407 --> 01:31:57,822
ours would be next.
1497
01:31:57,891 --> 01:32:00,480
They have children, they have families.
1498
01:32:00,549 --> 01:32:02,240
They have responsibilities,
1499
01:32:02,309 --> 01:32:04,415
and they have to think about all that.
1500
01:32:04,484 --> 01:32:07,660
You know, "If I lose my farm,
what happens next?
1501
01:32:07,729 --> 01:32:10,386
"Maybe, I'll be killed.
1502
01:32:10,455 --> 01:32:11,698
"And also, maybe,
1503
01:32:11,767 --> 01:32:13,079
"I'm also the breadwinner of my family.
1504
01:32:13,148 --> 01:32:14,287
"It's not just that I'm going
to be killed,
1505
01:32:14,356 --> 01:32:15,771
my family is going to be
destitute."
1506
01:32:17,704 --> 01:32:20,949
Now here was Robert
Carter, who didn't have to stay behind
1507
01:32:21,018 --> 01:32:22,951
and live in Clarendon County...
1508
01:32:23,020 --> 01:32:27,265
asking these parents to be the
first wave of a frontal attack
1509
01:32:27,334 --> 01:32:29,820
on the most jagged ramparts
of segregation.
1510
01:32:32,305 --> 01:32:33,893
There was a pregnant silence
1511
01:32:33,962 --> 01:32:36,551
when Carter finished his presentation.
1512
01:32:36,620 --> 01:32:39,208
And then
an old man in the back of the church
1513
01:32:39,277 --> 01:32:42,867
raised his hand and he said, "We
wondered how long it would take
1514
01:32:42,936 --> 01:32:44,524
you lawyers to get there."
1515
01:32:44,593 --> 01:32:45,732
They were ready.
1516
01:33:00,471 --> 01:33:02,680
When you had enough, you just had enough.
1517
01:33:02,749 --> 01:33:05,787
I mean, you just can't take it anymore.
1518
01:33:05,856 --> 01:33:08,755
Where can you go?
You can't back up.
1519
01:33:08,824 --> 01:33:10,723
You just can't, you gotta go forward.
1520
01:33:10,792 --> 01:33:12,172
And that was their mindset.
1521
01:33:16,418 --> 01:33:19,007
Not any of those families backed down.
1522
01:33:21,768 --> 01:33:25,289
Clarendon County is
almost like the Isaac Woodard case.
1523
01:33:25,358 --> 01:33:28,948
The starkness of the facts,
the depth of the racism
1524
01:33:29,017 --> 01:33:31,985
goes to the very heart of the unfairness
1525
01:33:32,054 --> 01:33:34,367
and the ugliness of white supremacy.
1526
01:33:34,436 --> 01:33:36,334
And in that case for Marshall,
1527
01:33:36,403 --> 01:33:38,578
it's going right
into the eye of the storm.
1528
01:33:40,960 --> 01:33:44,135
Marshall didn't
expect to win Briggs v. Elliott
1529
01:33:44,204 --> 01:33:46,344
in the federal court of South Carolina.
1530
01:33:46,413 --> 01:33:50,555
But his team did need to build
a record of evidence,
1531
01:33:50,625 --> 01:33:53,248
one that would give the United
States Supreme Court
1532
01:33:53,317 --> 01:33:57,632
a solid rationale for ending
segregation in public schools...
1533
01:33:57,701 --> 01:34:02,153
and essentially burying its own
"separate but equal" precedent.
1534
01:34:03,638 --> 01:34:06,123
Marshall has to show, well,
1535
01:34:06,192 --> 01:34:08,263
no matter what you did with resources,
1536
01:34:08,332 --> 01:34:10,679
just the mere fact of a statute
1537
01:34:10,748 --> 01:34:14,131
that requires segregation
is unconstitutional.
1538
01:34:14,200 --> 01:34:16,098
Why is it unconstitutional?
1539
01:34:16,167 --> 01:34:17,479
Well, for us, it would be easy.
1540
01:34:17,548 --> 01:34:19,308
This is just subordination
of Black people.
1541
01:34:19,377 --> 01:34:21,483
But for them, it was hard because
1542
01:34:21,552 --> 01:34:23,485
they didn't question it.
1543
01:34:23,554 --> 01:34:26,868
They weren't thinking that segregation
1544
01:34:26,937 --> 01:34:29,802
was harmful to Black people.
1545
01:34:29,871 --> 01:34:33,702
He said, if you were
in an automobile accident,
1546
01:34:33,771 --> 01:34:36,740
I would have to show
how the accident injured you.
1547
01:34:36,809 --> 01:34:38,880
Here in this case,
1548
01:34:38,949 --> 01:34:44,057
he has to show how segregation
has injured his clients.
1549
01:34:44,126 --> 01:34:46,888
What harm has it caused?
1550
01:34:51,616 --> 01:34:54,861
Enter 37-year-old psychologist
Kenneth Clark
1551
01:34:54,930 --> 01:34:57,830
and his now-famous dolls.
1552
01:35:00,833 --> 01:35:04,215
Kenneth and Mamie
Clark... the first Black Americans
1553
01:35:04,284 --> 01:35:08,392
to earn PhDs in psychology
from Columbia University...
1554
01:35:08,461 --> 01:35:11,740
had recently begun conducting
a series of research experiments
1555
01:35:11,809 --> 01:35:16,434
to determine the effect of
segregation on Black children.
1556
01:35:16,503 --> 01:35:20,438
The tools of the Clarks'
experimental trade
1557
01:35:20,507 --> 01:35:24,235
were breathtakingly simple:
1558
01:35:24,304 --> 01:35:27,100
a suitcase full of dolls,
1559
01:35:27,169 --> 01:35:29,413
four of them gender neutral,
1560
01:35:29,482 --> 01:35:33,486
identical in every way except
for skin color.
1561
01:35:33,555 --> 01:35:38,146
Two were white, and two were brown.
1562
01:35:38,215 --> 01:35:41,356
Doctor Kenneth Clark explained
their extraordinary findings
1563
01:35:41,425 --> 01:35:43,772
to N.A.A.C.P. attorney
Robert Carter,
1564
01:35:43,841 --> 01:35:46,602
who lobbied his colleagues
to make the Clarks' research
1565
01:35:46,671 --> 01:35:50,296
central to their legal strategy.
1566
01:35:50,365 --> 01:35:52,091
There's a great
deal of debate around the table
1567
01:35:52,160 --> 01:35:54,818
at Legal Defense headquarters
in New York City.
1568
01:35:54,887 --> 01:35:58,994
They are thinking, what are we
going to do with
1569
01:35:59,063 --> 01:36:02,101
what they call
"These damn dolls?"
1570
01:36:05,483 --> 01:36:09,004
Marshall sits at the end of the
table, says very little,
1571
01:36:09,073 --> 01:36:11,835
and just smokes, and smokes, and smokes,
1572
01:36:11,904 --> 01:36:13,768
as the attorneys hash it out, hash it out,
1573
01:36:13,837 --> 01:36:18,082
until finally Marshall says,
"I have to show injury.
1574
01:36:18,151 --> 01:36:19,394
"The dolls are how I'm going to show
1575
01:36:19,463 --> 01:36:22,293
"the injury to the children.
1576
01:36:22,362 --> 01:36:24,951
We're taking the dolls with us
to South Carolina."
1577
01:36:28,472 --> 01:36:32,407
By daybreak on May 28, 1951,
1578
01:36:32,476 --> 01:36:37,688
a caravan of cars filled with
parents, teachers, and children
1579
01:36:37,757 --> 01:36:40,933
was well on its way from
Summerton to Charleston,
1580
01:36:41,002 --> 01:36:44,315
where they were finally going
to get their day in court.
1581
01:36:44,384 --> 01:36:47,353
As they pulled up to the
federal courthouse,
1582
01:36:47,422 --> 01:36:50,977
the citizens of Clarendon County
were awed to discover
1583
01:36:51,046 --> 01:36:54,636
they were not the only ones
who had made the journey.
1584
01:36:56,983 --> 01:36:58,433
From across the state,
1585
01:36:58,502 --> 01:37:00,780
African Americans got up early
in the morning
1586
01:37:00,849 --> 01:37:03,679
and drove to Charleston.
1587
01:37:03,748 --> 01:37:05,612
And by the time the sun rose that morning,
1588
01:37:05,681 --> 01:37:10,169
they were lined up
as far as the eye could see.
1589
01:37:10,238 --> 01:37:12,930
Out the sidewalk, around the corner.
1590
01:37:12,999 --> 01:37:16,969
And these folks stood out there
in hot, hot May weather.
1591
01:37:17,038 --> 01:37:18,384
You ever been to South Carolina in May?
1592
01:37:18,453 --> 01:37:20,835
It is hot... sticky hot.
1593
01:37:20,904 --> 01:37:25,218
Thurgood Marshall,
arriving that morning for the trial,
1594
01:37:25,287 --> 01:37:28,635
was amazed... he had never
seen such a crowd.
1595
01:37:28,704 --> 01:37:30,983
And he turned to Robert Carter
1596
01:37:31,052 --> 01:37:33,917
and said, "Bob, it's all over."
1597
01:37:33,986 --> 01:37:36,229
Carter, you know,
his young associate said,
1598
01:37:36,298 --> 01:37:38,645
"Thurgood, what are you talking
about?"
1599
01:37:38,714 --> 01:37:42,132
He said, "They're not scared
anymore."
1600
01:37:42,201 --> 01:37:46,412
For Marshall to see
the throngs, the crowds,
1601
01:37:46,481 --> 01:37:48,586
coming out for the first day of trial
1602
01:37:48,655 --> 01:37:52,452
showed him that something had
shifted in the South.
1603
01:37:54,730 --> 01:37:58,907
They're not afraid anymore to
fight for their full citizenship
1604
01:37:58,976 --> 01:38:02,807
and to make the statement of
how important this is to them.
1605
01:38:07,433 --> 01:38:09,953
With the courtroom packed beyond capacity
1606
01:38:10,022 --> 01:38:13,749
that hot spring morning,
Marshall began arguing his case
1607
01:38:13,818 --> 01:38:16,476
before a panel of three federal judges,
1608
01:38:16,545 --> 01:38:19,859
one of whom was Judge Waties Waring.
1609
01:38:19,928 --> 01:38:22,448
He sparred with defense witnesses
1610
01:38:22,517 --> 01:38:24,899
from the school district
and presented his own
1611
01:38:24,968 --> 01:38:27,832
expert testimonies on the
egregious disparities
1612
01:38:27,902 --> 01:38:31,043
between the county's Black
and white schools.
1613
01:38:31,112 --> 01:38:34,322
Marshall did not stop there.
1614
01:38:34,391 --> 01:38:36,600
He proceeded to show the court
that the damage
1615
01:38:36,669 --> 01:38:38,705
to the Black children in Clarendon County
1616
01:38:38,774 --> 01:38:43,296
was real and quantifiable.
1617
01:38:43,365 --> 01:38:48,439
His key witness
took the stand that afternoon.
1618
01:38:48,508 --> 01:38:51,235
Dr. Kenneth Clark described
for the court
1619
01:38:51,304 --> 01:38:53,962
the doll experiments he and his
wife had conducted on hundreds
1620
01:38:54,031 --> 01:38:57,138
of Black schoolchildren across
the country,
1621
01:38:57,207 --> 01:38:59,243
asking them to evaluate and compare
1622
01:38:59,312 --> 01:39:02,281
the virtues of the black and white dolls.
1623
01:39:05,284 --> 01:39:07,907
Kenneth and Mamie
Clark conduct these studies
1624
01:39:07,976 --> 01:39:11,083
over a period of months and it
traumatizes them
1625
01:39:11,152 --> 01:39:13,119
to have to do this over and over
again and get
1626
01:39:13,188 --> 01:39:15,915
the same answers over and over again
1627
01:39:15,984 --> 01:39:17,744
from different children,
1628
01:39:17,813 --> 01:39:19,436
attending different schools
1629
01:39:19,505 --> 01:39:21,921
in different states.
1630
01:39:21,990 --> 01:39:28,445
Without fail, the Black children
preferred the white doll.
1631
01:39:41,630 --> 01:39:45,669
Not only does the
N.A.A.C.P. have all of the information
1632
01:39:45,738 --> 01:39:49,431
it needs on the brick and mortar issues,
1633
01:39:49,500 --> 01:39:51,123
now they have evidence that said,
1634
01:39:51,192 --> 01:39:52,779
"Look, this is inherently damaging
1635
01:39:52,848 --> 01:39:55,230
"to Black children, right?
1636
01:39:55,299 --> 01:39:56,991
"And this is a stigma,
and this is a damage
1637
01:39:57,060 --> 01:39:58,993
from which they will
never recover."
1638
01:40:04,274 --> 01:40:10,349
The trial was shorter
than anticipated... just two days.
1639
01:40:10,418 --> 01:40:14,767
Marshall had given it his best shot.
1640
01:40:14,836 --> 01:40:18,184
As he joined the throngs
streaming out of the courtroom,
1641
01:40:18,253 --> 01:40:21,015
the three judges retired
to Waring's chambers
1642
01:40:21,084 --> 01:40:22,740
to discuss the case.
1643
01:40:22,809 --> 01:40:27,159
The conference went just as expected.
1644
01:40:27,228 --> 01:40:29,678
Neither of the other two judges
had been persuaded
1645
01:40:29,747 --> 01:40:31,370
by Marshall's arguments.
1646
01:40:31,439 --> 01:40:36,444
Separate but equal
would stand in South Carolina.
1647
01:40:41,794 --> 01:40:43,968
The Briggs plaintiffs had lost,
1648
01:40:44,038 --> 01:40:47,524
as Marshall suspected they would, 2-1.
1649
01:40:47,593 --> 01:40:49,181
But, as Waring had planned,
1650
01:40:49,250 --> 01:40:52,598
the appeal was headed straight
to the Supreme Court.
1651
01:40:52,667 --> 01:40:54,910
And he meant to arm
the N.A.A.C.P. attorneys
1652
01:40:54,979 --> 01:40:58,121
with something for the battle
in Washington:
1653
01:40:58,190 --> 01:41:02,573
a dissenting opinion for the ages.
1654
01:41:02,642 --> 01:41:05,335
He knew he was writing for history.
1655
01:41:05,404 --> 01:41:09,097
He knew this was his moment.
1656
01:41:09,166 --> 01:41:12,618
And he labored for days
carefully constructing
1657
01:41:12,687 --> 01:41:18,417
and rewriting and revising over
and over again this dissent.
1658
01:41:18,486 --> 01:41:22,697
He wrote it with care and with
precision and with passion.
1659
01:41:22,766 --> 01:41:26,218
Waring's dissent is quite remarkable.
1660
01:41:28,392 --> 01:41:31,809
It's a direct indictment of segregation,
1661
01:41:31,878 --> 01:41:34,536
and it's important to say that
1662
01:41:34,605 --> 01:41:40,059
because so many people
were finessing the issue.
1663
01:41:40,128 --> 01:41:42,924
He described the testimony
of Dr. Clark
1664
01:41:42,993 --> 01:41:46,721
about the injury to Black
children, and he said,
1665
01:41:46,790 --> 01:41:49,413
"This must end, it must end now.
1666
01:41:51,519 --> 01:41:54,177
Segregation
is per se inequality."
1667
01:41:56,386 --> 01:41:59,561
Waring set off the
last sentence in a separate paragraph,
1668
01:41:59,630 --> 01:42:01,874
for effect.
1669
01:42:01,943 --> 01:42:05,602
And it was, in a way, his final
word on the vicious regime
1670
01:42:05,671 --> 01:42:08,881
of legalized white supremacy
in the Deep South.
1671
01:42:10,848 --> 01:42:13,817
Soon after he filed his dissent in Briggs,
1672
01:42:13,886 --> 01:42:16,233
Waring wrote President Harry
Truman with the news
1673
01:42:16,302 --> 01:42:18,960
that he was stepping down from
his federal judgeship.
1674
01:42:21,963 --> 01:42:24,138
The Warings left Charleston for good,
1675
01:42:24,207 --> 01:42:27,210
retiring to a small apartment
in New York City.
1676
01:42:36,150 --> 01:42:38,531
Thurgood Marshall was
fundraising in Alabama
1677
01:42:38,600 --> 01:42:40,878
when word reached him
that the Supreme Court
1678
01:42:40,947 --> 01:42:43,398
had finally ruled on the constitutionality
1679
01:42:43,467 --> 01:42:46,608
of segregation in public schools.
1680
01:42:49,956 --> 01:42:53,960
It had been a long and frustrating wait;
1681
01:42:54,029 --> 01:42:57,171
three years since the trial in
Judge Waring's courtroom.
1682
01:42:57,240 --> 01:43:02,762
The name "Briggs"
had been subsumed by then.
1683
01:43:02,831 --> 01:43:06,490
The N.A.A.C.P. had brought four
similar desegregation cases,
1684
01:43:06,559 --> 01:43:10,391
in Virginia, Delaware,
the District of Columbia,
1685
01:43:10,460 --> 01:43:12,393
and Kansas.
1686
01:43:12,462 --> 01:43:15,327
The five cases had been
consolidated and filed
1687
01:43:15,396 --> 01:43:19,710
as Brown v. Board of Education
of Topeka, Kansas.
1688
01:43:22,299 --> 01:43:24,991
Briggs was the
first case to arrive at the Supreme Court.
1689
01:43:25,060 --> 01:43:28,650
By all accounts it should have
been Briggs v. Elliott.
1690
01:43:28,719 --> 01:43:33,379
My personal theory is that the
court did not want this case
1691
01:43:33,448 --> 01:43:40,041
banning school segregation to be
focused on a Southern case.
1692
01:43:40,110 --> 01:43:43,044
Topeka, Kansas, was not in the South.
1693
01:43:43,113 --> 01:43:45,633
And the South would claim
it was being picked on.
1694
01:43:45,702 --> 01:43:48,429
But how do you say that if the
lead defendant
1695
01:43:48,498 --> 01:43:50,672
is Topeka, Kansas?
1696
01:43:55,263 --> 01:44:00,751
The Supreme Court has
rendered a momentous and historic decision
1697
01:44:00,820 --> 01:44:06,723
saying that education should
be equal in this free America.
1698
01:44:06,792 --> 01:44:09,795
The fact it was a unanimous decision
1699
01:44:09,864 --> 01:44:12,970
should set for rest once and for all
1700
01:44:13,039 --> 01:44:15,559
the problem as to whether or not
1701
01:44:15,628 --> 01:44:19,149
second class citizenship, segregation,
1702
01:44:19,218 --> 01:44:22,290
could be consistent any longer
with the law of the country.
1703
01:44:47,281 --> 01:44:50,387
Marshall and the
N.A.A.C.P. had certainly been hopeful.
1704
01:44:50,456 --> 01:44:53,321
I don't think there was
any reason for them
1705
01:44:53,390 --> 01:44:56,635
to expect it to be unanimous.
1706
01:44:56,704 --> 01:44:58,568
That must have been a surprise.
1707
01:44:58,637 --> 01:45:05,091
The decision is written
in a manner and at a length
1708
01:45:05,160 --> 01:45:09,613
such that it could be printed in
every newspaper in the country.
1709
01:45:14,963 --> 01:45:17,552
So that it could be read and understood
1710
01:45:17,621 --> 01:45:22,454
by any literate person in the
United States.
1711
01:45:22,523 --> 01:45:24,525
So that it could be read to someone
1712
01:45:24,594 --> 01:45:26,734
who might not be able to read
him or herself,
1713
01:45:26,803 --> 01:45:29,323
and that person would be able
to understand
1714
01:45:29,392 --> 01:45:33,810
why and how the justices
had reached this conclusion.
1715
01:45:36,157 --> 01:45:39,263
Citing evidence
from the Clark's doll studies,
1716
01:45:39,333 --> 01:45:41,611
Chief Justice Earl Warren was explicit
1717
01:45:41,680 --> 01:45:44,372
about the very real damage
suffered by children
1718
01:45:44,441 --> 01:45:46,892
segregated by race.
1719
01:45:46,961 --> 01:45:50,240
"Any language in
Plessy v. Ferguson contrary
1720
01:45:50,309 --> 01:45:55,901
to this finding," he wrote,
"is rejected."
1721
01:45:55,970 --> 01:45:59,767
But Warren steered clear of any
mention of Waties Waring,
1722
01:45:59,836 --> 01:46:02,873
who had been the only federal
judge in the five cases
1723
01:46:02,942 --> 01:46:04,737
to file a dissent arguing
1724
01:46:04,806 --> 01:46:09,190
that segregation itself
was unconstitutional.
1725
01:46:09,259 --> 01:46:10,812
You got
to remember at this time Judge Waring
1726
01:46:10,881 --> 01:46:12,780
is a very polarizing figure.
1727
01:46:12,849 --> 01:46:16,059
He's probably the most reviled
white man in the South
1728
01:46:16,128 --> 01:46:18,510
among white Southerners.
1729
01:46:18,579 --> 01:46:21,167
The court didn't make his dissent
1730
01:46:21,236 --> 01:46:23,066
the basis of their decision.
1731
01:46:23,135 --> 01:46:25,965
But it is obvious when you read it,
1732
01:46:26,034 --> 01:46:28,382
it is Judge Waring's language.
1733
01:46:32,109 --> 01:46:34,146
Back in New York City,
1734
01:46:34,215 --> 01:46:36,217
Walter White and other luminaries
1735
01:46:36,286 --> 01:46:39,047
from New York's civil rights
community gathered
1736
01:46:39,116 --> 01:46:40,739
in the Warings' parlor to toast
1737
01:46:40,808 --> 01:46:43,914
the historic milestone
and the final triumph
1738
01:46:43,983 --> 01:46:46,192
of Judge Waring's judicial strategy.
1739
01:46:49,713 --> 01:46:52,854
A few miles away,
Thurgood Marshall and his team
1740
01:46:52,923 --> 01:46:54,994
held their own victory party,
1741
01:46:55,063 --> 01:46:58,895
allowing themselves only
the briefest of revelries.
1742
01:46:58,964 --> 01:47:02,933
For Marshall, the Brown
ruling did not mark the end
1743
01:47:03,002 --> 01:47:07,973
of a hard-fought battle,
but the beginning of a new one.
1744
01:47:09,561 --> 01:47:11,770
Everyone was celebrating in the office
1745
01:47:11,839 --> 01:47:13,737
and Marshall said "You're all
a bunch of fools," you know,
1746
01:47:13,806 --> 01:47:14,773
"We have a lot more work ahead, okay?
1747
01:47:14,842 --> 01:47:16,119
We have to get back to work."
1748
01:47:16,188 --> 01:47:19,260
He understood what was to come.
1749
01:47:19,329 --> 01:47:23,091
As a leader, you can barely
experience excitement
1750
01:47:23,160 --> 01:47:24,748
without looking around the
corner for whatever
1751
01:47:24,817 --> 01:47:27,682
is the next challenge
or work that has to be done.
1752
01:47:38,037 --> 01:47:39,660
Hello, welcome to "Like It Is."
1753
01:47:39,729 --> 01:47:42,283
Today's edition features
a look back in time
1754
01:47:42,352 --> 01:47:44,596
into the tragedy of Isaac Woodard,
1755
01:47:44,665 --> 01:47:47,012
a man whose confrontation with
Southern racism
1756
01:47:47,081 --> 01:47:49,048
came to symbolize the brutality in America
1757
01:47:49,117 --> 01:47:50,809
at the end of World War II.
1758
01:47:50,878 --> 01:47:56,987
Nearly 40 years
after his blinding, Isaac Woodard agreed
1759
01:47:57,056 --> 01:47:59,162
to revisit the details of his ordeal
1760
01:47:59,231 --> 01:48:01,302
with a local television journalist.
1761
01:48:01,371 --> 01:48:03,511
Do you think back towards those days,
1762
01:48:03,580 --> 01:48:05,375
to have something like this happen to you
1763
01:48:05,444 --> 01:48:07,204
while you're still in uniform?
1764
01:48:07,273 --> 01:48:09,793
A lot of people ask me,
was I bitter with, you know,
1765
01:48:09,862 --> 01:48:11,415
with the world, with everybody?
1766
01:48:11,485 --> 01:48:13,659
I told them, no, I wasn't.
I wasn't because...
1767
01:48:13,728 --> 01:48:15,937
I said, well, everybody
ain't bad, you know,
1768
01:48:16,006 --> 01:48:17,905
that I know.
1769
01:48:17,974 --> 01:48:19,389
And the one that I'm really
bitter against,
1770
01:48:19,458 --> 01:48:22,737
the one that really did it to me.
1771
01:48:22,806 --> 01:48:24,221
He never served a day... No, no, no.
1772
01:48:24,290 --> 01:48:26,016
Kept his job. Right, right.
1773
01:48:26,085 --> 01:48:28,640
Kept his job, they didn't even
take him off the force,
1774
01:48:28,709 --> 01:48:29,779
you know?
1775
01:48:29,848 --> 01:48:31,366
For the first few years,
1776
01:48:31,435 --> 01:48:34,059
he called them names
I couldn't even mention.
1777
01:48:34,128 --> 01:48:37,683
But, uh, he grew out of it.
1778
01:48:40,755 --> 01:48:43,171
I saw the
part of him after the bitterness,
1779
01:48:43,240 --> 01:48:46,485
and the anger, and the frustration.
1780
01:48:46,554 --> 01:48:51,110
Most of the time I saw him,
he was smiling.
1781
01:48:51,179 --> 01:48:53,665
He was so well-dressed.
1782
01:48:53,734 --> 01:48:55,977
There was a tie clip on the tie,
1783
01:48:56,046 --> 01:48:57,254
and you could tell the way he walked,
1784
01:48:57,323 --> 01:48:58,877
he was proud of who he was.
1785
01:49:00,879 --> 01:49:05,711
In 1962, the U.S.
Army finally granted Sergeant Woodard
1786
01:49:05,780 --> 01:49:08,334
the disability benefits
they had denied him
1787
01:49:08,403 --> 01:49:12,649
in the years following his blinding.
1788
01:49:12,718 --> 01:49:14,755
Eventually, he was able to buy
1789
01:49:14,824 --> 01:49:16,515
several properties throughout the Bronx
1790
01:49:16,584 --> 01:49:21,796
and provide a comfortable life
for himself and his family.
1791
01:49:21,865 --> 01:49:24,799
What do you think
that people should learn about,
1792
01:49:24,868 --> 01:49:26,387
what's happened to Isaac Woodard,
1793
01:49:26,456 --> 01:49:30,529
what lesson is there about America?
1794
01:49:30,598 --> 01:49:33,636
Well, I mean, the way I feel
about it, you know,
1795
01:49:33,705 --> 01:49:37,950
that people should learn how
to live with one another,
1796
01:49:38,019 --> 01:49:39,400
and how to treat one another.
1797
01:49:39,469 --> 01:49:41,816
Because after all, we all are,
we're human beings,
1798
01:49:41,885 --> 01:49:43,991
regardless of color.
1799
01:49:44,060 --> 01:49:46,200
Everybody should, you know, have
some sympathy for one another,
1800
01:49:46,269 --> 01:49:47,511
you know?
1801
01:49:47,581 --> 01:49:49,479
And don't do cruel things to one another
1802
01:49:49,548 --> 01:49:51,550
that you don't wanna be did to you.
1803
01:49:51,619 --> 01:49:53,517
That's the way I feel about it.
1804
01:49:55,036 --> 01:50:00,455
Isaac Woodard died in 1992, at age 73,
1805
01:50:00,524 --> 01:50:03,355
entirely unaware that his simple request
1806
01:50:03,424 --> 01:50:08,325
to be treated like a man, and
the injustice that followed it,
1807
01:50:08,394 --> 01:50:10,293
had emboldened a federal judge
1808
01:50:10,362 --> 01:50:12,882
and the president of the United States
1809
01:50:12,951 --> 01:50:17,127
to pursue the destruction
of legalized segregation.
1810
01:50:29,381 --> 01:50:35,559
Historians
like to talk in terms of grand narratives.
1811
01:50:38,735 --> 01:50:41,842
But when you look closely,
you find often it is
1812
01:50:41,911 --> 01:50:46,432
a single person taking a certain action.
1813
01:50:46,501 --> 01:50:50,644
It's not often sufficient
to cause grand change,
1814
01:50:50,713 --> 01:50:52,024
but it is a spark.
1815
01:50:53,957 --> 01:50:57,754
Every fundamental shift
in this country has required the courage
1816
01:50:57,823 --> 01:51:02,448
of ordinary people to demand
that they be respected,
1817
01:51:02,517 --> 01:51:05,555
exceptional human beings
who were willing to put
1818
01:51:05,624 --> 01:51:08,040
their lives on the line.
1819
01:51:08,109 --> 01:51:10,940
The ways in which they changed
this country
1820
01:51:11,009 --> 01:51:13,943
we accept almost like air,
1821
01:51:14,012 --> 01:51:16,566
without ever giving a moment's thought
1822
01:51:16,635 --> 01:51:19,465
to the individuals who
sacrificed themselves for it.
1823
01:51:19,534 --> 01:51:24,470
You don't know what the effect
of your speaking up
1824
01:51:24,539 --> 01:51:28,474
and using your voice will be.
1825
01:51:28,543 --> 01:51:32,375
It may even look like it was nominal.
1826
01:51:32,444 --> 01:51:35,896
But in the long course of history,
1827
01:51:35,965 --> 01:51:40,038
can be earth-shattering,
and powerful and important.