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“In 1946, Oerson Wells, the director of Citizen Kane, was at the height of his fame.”
At the time, he had a national radio show called Oerson Wells commentaries on ABC. I'll try to have a story for each time, and I'm going to speak my mind about the news. You know, we don't have to agree on everything to be friends. After a year on the radio, discussing politics and Hollywood, Wells heard of a shocking crime.
It was the end of World War II. A black soldier, heading home, was brutally beaten by a white police officer in South Carolina. No one knew the identity of the police officer, no one knew the town where it had happened. And Wells pledged to solve the mystery, on air. Today, we're bringing you a special episode from the radio diaries podcast and their
new series, Oerson Wells and the blind soldier. It's the story of a crime in a small southern town that became a spark for the budding civil rights movement.
“When we begin at the scene of the crime, I'm right here at the spot where the theater”
was right across the street here, but all these trees weren't there then. My name is Cole Rene Johnson, I'm 98 years old. When I was 18 years old, I had just got out of high school. I was working at the theater. One of the fellows that worked at the theater came over and he said, "Cory, some police
all their beaten up a man. I left the ticket box. I said, "What I want to see?" You see that space right over there? That's when it happened.
And I stood on the railroad track and I saw a man about a drugstore. He was down on the street there, being beat up by the police. I didn't know who it was. Well, that's what I saw.
“I don't know when it's living, it can tell it.”
And I ain't never forgot it.
On February 12th of 1946, an African-American soldier in uniform on the day he is discharged is brutally beaten in South Carolina. This horrific event happened to this young soldier, but we didn't know how and we didn't know who was responsible. This story could have easily have been just a footnote.
If you did not have Orson Wells lifting it up to public attention. Orson Wells immediately recognized that this was a story. It was a great who done it. [MUSIC PLAYING] This is ABC, the American Broadcasting Company.
Good morning. This is Orson Wells speaking. I'd like to read you, and I have to David. All right, Isaac Woodward, Jr., being duly swaned or deposed and stayed as follows. That I'm 27 years old on the veteran of the United States Army having served for 15
months in the South Pacific and earned one battle star. Why not? I'm Richard Gargoyle, I'm the author of Unexampled Courage about the planning of Isaac Woodward. Here is the story. Isaac Woodward and a group of soldiers, black and white, who had been that day discharged
from Fort Gordon, who were heading home. On a bus, they were sharing a bottle and talking in laughing. I'm sure they were a bit loud and a little robustness. And some of the white folks on the bus didn't like it. The bus driver didn't like it.
About one hour out of Atlanta, the bus driver stopped at a small drugstore as he stopped to ask him if he had signed a wait for him to lie at a chance to go to the restroom. He cursed and said, no. The bus driver cursed him. When he cursed me.
And Isaac Woodward, I cursed him back, cursed him back.
He is in the first hours of his return to America.
This is a man with battlefield medals on his chest, sergeant stripes on his shoulders. He is treated like a, he's nothing. He spoke up. The bus driver was now seeping with the impudence of this black man. He left his bus in search of a police officer and what had tried to explain that all
I was trying to do was go to the bathroom.
The response to that was to be hit over the head with a black check.
Sitting in the mid-chance to explain the police and struck me with a billy across my head
“and told me to shut up after that the police would grab me by my left arm and twisted it”
behind my back. And a moment later he was being let away and the bus left without him. And all the way to the town jail where he was being arrested, he was beaten repeatedly by a police officer, eventually driving the end of the baton and to both of what was as. We started punching me in my eyes with the end of the billy.
They pushed me inside the jail house and locked me up. I woke up next morning and could not see. I was blind.
Sergeant Woodard survived, but he was blinded permanently.
My name is Laura Williams and Isaac Woodard was my uncle. Immediately after the attack, there was so much confusion because my family didn't know where he was. Isaac didn't even know where he was. A reporter, guy by name of John McCray, who was also very active in the NAACP, heard
the story that there was a black man at the VA, South Carolina Hospital who had been beaten by a white police officer and was now blind. The brutality of beating a veteran like that still in uniform, coming home from fight in the war, that was enough to really galvanize the support of NAACP. My name is James L. Feld as senior, as executive director of the NAACP from South Carolina.
The NAACP is looking for a way to reach a larger audience and they knew that Orson Wells was a friend of the civil rights movement. They believed it would capture his imagination and they were right. He heard about it.
“I think on a weekday in that Sunday, he was on the national radio.”
There's a price for everything, there's nothing that does not have its cost. What does it cost to be a Negro in South Carolina, it cost to man his eyes? My name is Beatrice Wells and I'm Orson Wells' daughter. Nobody talked about this kind of stuff in 1946 on the radio about a black man being beat by a white man.
The blind soldier fought for me in this war, at least I can do now, it's fight for him. I have eyes, he hasn't. I have a voice on the radio, he hasn't. He wanted America to know who the culprit was. Nobody knew who would beat and the Isaac Woodard at the time and no one knew what talent
it had actually happened in.
“Not seems the officer of the law who blinded the young Negro boy of the affidavit has not”
been named till we know more about him for just now we'll call the policeman Officer X. He might be listening to this, I hope so. Officer X, I'm talking to you. Wash your hands, Officer X washed them well, scrub and scour, you won't blood out the blood of a blinded war veteran.
In his tone, caught your attention.
Wash your lifetime, you'll never wash away that leperous lack of pigment, the guilty
pallor of the white man. There's not something that just hit you and bounce off, it just kind of sears itself into your brain. He was demanding accountability for white people for inflicting violence against black people.
He was right on the case, that was a beginning, that was a beginning. You're going to be uncovered, we will blast out your name. I will find means to remove from you all refuge, Officer X, you can't get rid of me. This was episode one of Orson Wells and the blind soldier. You can find the rest of the series on the radio diaries podcast.
This story was produced by Michael Hazel, Nellie Gillis, and Joe Richmond of Radio Diaries, with help from Alyssa Escarse. It was edited by Deborah Torge and Benchapiro, and mixed by Benchapiro. Music from StillWagganSimpenet. To find out more, go to radiotiries.org.
