On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome author and South Carolina U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel.

In 1957 we introduced the American people to then little known civil rights leader, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who had just returned from the Montgomery bus boycott. Along his side was Judge J. Waties Waring of South Carolina, US District Judge for the Eastern District. On the bench, Waring was a forceful defender of equality. His decisions laid the groundwork for desegregation as law, Brown v. Board of education and a constitution capable of protecting the enfranchisement and emancipation of all people. Sixty two years after that broadcast, the native South Carolinian US circuit judge who presides in Waring’s seat has discovered with great historical insight, the horrible crime that stimulated the judge’s commitment to civil rights. In his new book “Unexampled Courage: The Blinding of Sgt. Isaac Woodard and the Awakening of Harry S. Truman and J. Waties Waring” Judge Richard Gergel has penned a moving account of the judge, his conversion from apathetic to the moral conscience of southern jurisprudence.