The Case for the Courts: Military, Society, and the Legal Record

In 1945, as U.S. service members returned home from World War II, anthropologist William A. Caudill was concerned that a Black veteran would "often be considered first a Negro, second and incidentally a veteran." The distinction was important, Caudill maintained, because it meant that, in a largely segregated and non-egalitarian society, African Americans who had served would face challenges accessing the benefits available via the newly passed GI Bill—home loans, financial aid for college, unemployment payments.¹

Scholars have since proven Caudill right. They have shown that, during and after military service, people from marginalized groups historically faced exceptional challenges—challenges that undercut the notion that privileged martial citizenship was universally accessible. Race, gender, and sexuality shaped access to opportunities within the military hierarchy, and inequities encountered during and after service compelled former service members to participate in and become civil rights activists.² In order to study complex relationships between the military and society, we must acknowledge that service members and veterans have multifaceted identities, and we must examine policies and social movements.

Richard Gergel and Kellie Wilson-Buford remind us anew that there is an underexplored expanse that both shapes and illuminates connections between military and civilian worlds: the courts. Though vastly different in scope and focus, their books both highlight that conversations and directives in courtrooms—like policies and social movements—are influenced by individuals' proclivities and larger social circumstances. The interpretation of doctrine is pliable, and rights can be re-conceptualized, expanded, and undercut based on the outcomes of criminal investigations, hearings, and trials.

Gergel knows that much firsthand. A U.S. district judge, he presides in the same Columbia, South Carolina courthouse once overseen by one of his book's protagonists, the long under-celebrated civil rights stalwart, Judge J. Waties Waring. Gergel's main focus is the U.S. South and the trajectory of several key civil rights cases of the 1940s and 1950s, including, Brown v. Board of Education. Aiming to trace legal change over time, Gergel ushers readers into the personal and professional lives of Waring, President Harry Truman, and movement heroes like Thurgood Marshall and Walter White, as well as families and business owners who risked everything to bring attention to injustice. A primary aim for Gergel is to show how the law can be used as a tool to undermine or stimulate change. Unexampled Courage, built on a foundation of archival research and pithy prose, and spotlighting some of the most horrifying and hopeful aspects of U.S. history, is an engrossing read.

Gergel's story begins with a portrait of its key linchpin, a Black World War II veteran named Isaac Woodard. Like many of the millions of African Americans who served in the military throughout American history—including more than one million during World War II—Woodard faced a jarring return to civilian society. Having taken "intense enemy fire" (p. 13) while working in a segregated support unit in New Guinea, he wore sergeant stripes and battle medals when he was honorably discharged on February 12, 1946 at Camp Gordon in Georgia. Newly released, Woodard boarded a bus scheduled to traverse a swath of the deep Jim Crow South, from Augusta, Georgia to Winnsboro, South Carolina, where the veteran was to be reunited with his wife.

While accounts of what transpired on the bus varied, according to Gergel, "what is clear is that Sergeant Woodard displayed a degree of assertiveness and self-confidence that most southern whites were not accustomed to and not prepared to accept." Woodard later maintained that the trouble began when he requested...