On February 12, 1946, hours after being honorably discharged from the U.S. Army, African American World War II veteran Isaac Woodard, Jr. was wrongfully arrested and beaten by Batesburg (SC) Chief of Police Linwood Shull during a night in jail. Suffering from blindness and amnesia from the beatings, Sergeant Woodard appeared before a local judge the next morning who fined him fifty dollars. Almost nine months later, in November, a jury in federal court in Columbia found Shull not guilty of all charges.