Nonfiction Spotlight on UNEXAMPLED COURAGE

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This week’s nonfiction spotlight highlights a largely-unknown incident in American history that sparked a Civil Rights revolution in UNEXAMPLED COURAGE: The Blinding of Sgt. Isaac Woodard and the Awakening of President Harry S. Truman and Judge J. Waties Waring by Richard Gergel.

On February 12, 1946, Sergeant Isaac Woodard, a returning, decorated African American veteran, was removed from a Greyhound bus in Batesburg, South Carolina, after he challenged the bus driver’s disrespectful treatment of him. Woodard, in uniform, was arrested by the local police chief, Lynwood Shull, and beaten and blinded while in custody.

Read more about the history and how the author discovered the story here in the New York Times, and check out an excerpt here.

Two starred reviews!

“Gergel is both an astute researcher and an engaging writer, bringing this significant story to vivid life. Civil rights history at its most compelling.”–Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“[A]n important work on the prehistory of the civil rights struggle and an insightful account of how a single incident can inspire massive social and political changes.”–Publishers Weekly, starred review

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