Hello, this is Orson Welles.
I've come to visit with you for a few minutes and, with your permission, every week at this time we'll have a little conversation about people and the things they're doing all over the world.
In 1946, Orson Welles, the director of Citizen Kane, was at the height of his fame.
At the time, he had a national radio show called Orson Welles 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 even 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 Orson Welles 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.
And 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 wasn't there then.
My name is Corrine 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, I called in.
Some police over there beating 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 by the drug store.
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'm the only witness living that 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 Welles lifting it up to public attention.
Orson Welles immediately recognized that this was a story.
It was a great whodunit.
This is ABC, the American Broadcasting Company.
Good morning, this is Orson Welles speaking.
I'd like to read you an affidavit.
I, Isaac Woodward Jr, being duly sworn, to depose and state as follows that I'm 27 years old and a veteran of the United States Army, having served for 15 months in the South Pacific and earned one Battlestar.
While I'm Richard Gergel.
I'm the author of Unexampled Courage about the blinding of Isaac Woodard.
Here's the story.
Isaac Woodard and a group of soldiers, black and white, who had been that day discharged from Fort Gordon, were heading home on a bus.
They were sharing a bottle and talking and laughing.
I'm sure they were a bit loud and A little rambunctious.
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, I asked him if he had time to wait for me until I had a chance to go to the restroom.
He cursed and said no.
The bus driver cursed him.
When he cursed me.
And Isaac Woodard.
I cursed him back.
Cursed him back.
He is in the first hours of his return to America.
And this is a man with battlefield medals on his chest, sergeant stripes on his shoulders, and he is treated like he's nothing.
And he spoke up.
The bus driver was now seething with the impudence of this black man.
And he left his bus in search of a police officer and would have tried to explain that all I was trying to do was go to the bathroom.
And the response to that was to be hit over the head with a blackjack.
They didn't give me a chance to explain.
The policeman struck me with a billy across my head and told me to shut up.
After that, the policeman grabbed me by my left arm and twisted it behind my back.
And a moment later, he was being led away and the bus left without him.
And on 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 away into both of Woodard's eyes.
He started punching me in my eyes with the end of the billy.
He pushed me inside the jailhouse 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, a guy by the name of John McCrae 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 fighting the war.
That was enough to really galvanize the support of the NAACP.
My name is James L. Felder, Sr.
I was 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 Welles 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, and 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 a man his eyes.
My name is Beatrice Wells, and I'm Orson Welles' 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.
The least I can do now is 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 had beaten Isaac Woodard at the time and no one knew what town it had actually happened in.
Now, it 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. Wash them well.
Scrub and scour.
You won't blot out the blood of a blinded war veteran.
Even his tone caught your attention.
Wash a lifetime.
You'll never wash away that leprous lack of pigment.
The guilty pallor of the white man.
It's not something that just hits you and bounces 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 the beginning.
That was the 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 Welles and the Blind Soldier.
You can find the rest of the series on the Radio Diaries podcast.
This story was produced by Micah Hazel, Nellie Gillis and Joe Richman of Radio Diaries, with help from Elisa Escarce.
It was edited by Deborah George and Ben Shapiro, and mixed by Ben Shapiro.
Music from Stellwagen Symphonette.
To find out more, go to radiodiaries.org.
