688. The Blinding of Isaac Woodard (Woody Guthrie)

"Isaac Woodard (1919-1992) was an African-American veteran of WW2 who was beaten and maimed only hours after being discharged from the US army. Still in uniform, he was left permanently blind after suffering from a ruptured cornea during an encounter with the South Carolina police on February 14, 1946. The sheriff involved claimed he had struck Woodard only once in self-defense, very different from Woodard's story. The case was not widely reported immediately but it soon became a major issue, with extensive newspaper coverage, when the NAACP campaigned for the South Carolina state government to take action, which they had been reluctant to do. One significant campaigner was film-maker Orson Welles whose radio broadcast about the incident can be heard on YouTube.