American Experience: The Blinding of Isaac Woodard


Tuesday, March 30th at 9 p.m.

In 1946, Isaac Woodard, a Black army sergeant was on his way home to South Carolina after serving in WWII, was taken off a Greyhound bus after a heated exchange with the driver. The driver 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.

The film details how the crime led to the racial awakening of South Carolina and how Judge J. Waties Waring and President Harry Truman 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 jump-started the modern civil rights movement.

A graphic with arms circling each other and text reading: Caregiving
airs June 24

Caregiving

Scott Woelfel
aired June 12

AZPBS General Manager on House vote to cut $1.1B public media funding

Super Why characters

Join a Super Why Reading Camp to play, learn and grow

A view of Phoenix with the PBS logo and text reading: Annual Luncheon
Dec. 18

Join us for the Arizona PBS Annual Luncheon

Subscribe to Arizona PBS Newsletters

STAY in touch
with azpbs.org!

Subscribe to Arizona PBS Newsletters: