The Blinding of Isaac Woodard

Poster

In 1946, Isaac Woodard, a Black army sergeant on his way home to South Carolina after serving in WWII, was taken off a Greyhound bus after a heated exchange with the driver, who refused to let him off at a rest stop to use the restroom. The local chief of police savagely beat him, leaving him unconscious and permanently blind. The shocking incident made national headlines and, when the police chief was acquitted by an all-white jury, the injustice would change the course of American history. Based on Richard Gergel’s book Unexampled Courage, the film details how the crime led to the racial awakening of South Carolina Judge J. Waties Waring and President Harry Truman, who desegregated the military and federal offices two years later. It also ultimately set the stage for the Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, which finally outlawed segregation in public schools and jumpstARTEd the modern civil rights movement.

Director

Jamila Ephron

Genres

History

Duration

1x120, 2x60

Production Company

AMERICAN EXPERIENCE, Ark Media

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