Radio Diaries

This is the final episode of our series about Isaac Woodard, a Black soldier who was beaten and blinded by a white police officer in 1946. In the last episode, radio host Orson Welles, who was investigating the case, learned the officer's identity.

Isaac Woodard himself told a reporter, "Nothing they can do to the police officer will give me my eyes back, but if they punish him good and legal it may keep the same thing from happening to some more of our boys coming back home. I want him punished."

But demanding accountability and getting it were two different things—especially in the Jim Crow South. This week, the officer goes to trial, and the President of the United States takes notice.

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Last week, we shared the story of Isaac Woodard, a Black soldier who was brutally beaten by a white police officer in South Carolina. No one knew the name of the police officer. Or even the town where it happened. Not even Woodard himself. 

By the summer of '46, the case was gaining national attention thanks to Orson Welles, who was investigating the crime, week-by-week, on his radio show.

Today, episode 2 of our series Orson Welles and the Blind Soldier, about an incident in a small, southern town that became a spark in the growing civil rights movement. 

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Thanks to Richard Gergel for his book Unexampled Courage and Indiana University’s Lilly Library for archival audio. Music from Matthias Bossi and Duke Ellington. 

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On February 12, 1946, a Black soldier was heading home from WWII when he was brutally beaten by a white police officer in South Carolina. No one knew the identity of the police officer. No one even knew the town where it happened.  
When the famous radio host Orson Welles heard about the crime, he pledged to solve the mystery, week-by-week, on the air. 
Today, episode 1 of our new series Orson Welles and the Blind Soldier, about an incident in a small, southern town that led to the desegregation of the U.S. military. 

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Thanks to Richard Gergel for his book Unexampled Courage and Indiana University’s Lilly Library for archival audio. Music from Matthias Bossi and Bill Frisell for music.

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On February 12, 1946, an African American soldier heading home from WWII was attacked by a white police officer somewhere in South Carolina. The soldier's name was Isaac Woodard.
No one knew the identity of the officer who attacked Woodard. No one even knew which town it had happened in. So when the famous radio host Orson Welles heard about the case, he vowed to solve it on the air.
Radio Diaries and Radiotopia bring you a new series about a crime in a small southern town that led to the desegregation of the United States military.
The first episode drops February 12th on the Radio Diaries Podcast.

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A little over a decade ago, we went to interview a woman at her small one-bedroom apartment in a sprawling complex in the Bronx. She was living a quiet and somewhat anonymous life. But many years earlier, she had done something remarkable.
The woman’s name was Claudette Colvin. In 1955, she was a 15-year-old girl growing up in Montgomery, Alabama. On March 2nd of that year, Colvin refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a public bus, and was arrested. This was nine months before Rosa Parks would do the exact same thing. But while Rosa Parks became an icon of the Civil Rights movement, Colvin spent most of her life in obscurity.
Claudette Colvin passed away this week, at age 86. We’re remembering her by revisiting the story we did with her in 2015.

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