The 2019 Max M. Shapiro Lecture
A Conversation with Judge Richard M. Gergel, United States District Judge, Charleston Division District of South Carolina.
The 2019 Shapiro Lecture
February 28, 2019
12:45–2:00 p.m.
Barristers Hall
Boston University School of Law
765 Commonwealth Ave, Barristers Hall
Richard Gergel is the author of Unexampled Courage: The Blinding of Sgt. Isaac Woodard and the Awakening of President Harry S. Truman and Judge J. Waties Waring. Gergel’s book recounts President Harry Truman’s outrage upon hearing of Sergeant Isaac Woodard’s removal from a Greyhound bus in Batesburg, South Carolina. Woodard, a returning, decorated African American veteran, was arrested in uniform, beaten, and blinded while in custody. Truman established the first presidential commission on civil rights and his Justice Department filed criminal charges against the local police chief.
An all-white South Carolina jury acquitted Shull, but the presiding judge, J. Waties Waring, was conscience-stricken by the failure of the court system to do justice by the soldier. Waring described the trial as his “baptism of fire,” and began issuing major civil rights decisions from his Charleston courtroom, including his 1951 dissent in Briggs v. Elliott declaring public school segregation per se unconstitutional. Three years later, the Supreme Court adopted Waring’s language and reasoning in Brown v. Board of Education.
Richard Gergel’s Unexampled Courage details the impact of the blinding of Sergeant Woodard on the racial awakening of President Truman and Judge Waring, and traces their influential roles in changing the course of America’s civil rights history.
Judge Gergel will discuss his book, and then open up to a faculty round-table discussion. The event will close with a Q&A portion.
Faculty Panel:
Jack Beermann, Professor of Law, BU School of Law
Kristin Collins, Professor of Law, BU School of Law
Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Dean, BU School of Law
Portia Pedro, Associate Professor of Law, BU School of Law
About the Max M. Shapiro Lecture
The Max M. Shapiro Lecture, BU Law’s principle endowed lectureship, serves as a tribute to the memory of Max Shapiro (‘33), a lawyer who devoted his career to examining the place of legal ethics in trial advocacy.