Discover the 1946 incident of racial violence by police against army sergeant Isaac Woodard. This event led to the racial awakening of President Harry Truman and set the stage for the landmark 1954 Supreme Court Brown v. Board of Education decision, jumpstarting the civil rights movement.
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 blatant 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 awakenings of South Carolina Judge J. Waties Waring and President Harry Truman, who desegregated federal offices and the military two years later. The event 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.
Producer: Jamila Ephron
Executive Producer: Cameo George, Susan Bellows
Production Company: Ark Media
Copyright Year: 2021
Director: Jamila Ephron
Narrator: André Holland
Writers: Jamila Ephron, Mark Zwonitzer
Number of Discs: 1
Length: 120 minutes