How a Soldier’s Beating Helped Desegregate the Military

In 1946, hours after being honourably discharged from the US Army, Black veteran Isaac Woodard was pulled from a bus in South Carolina and beaten by a white police officer, leaving him permanently blind. The assault drew national attention and helped galvanise the civil rights movement, contributing to President Harry Truman’s decision to order the desegregation of the armed forces.

The officer’s identity and the town where the attack happened were initially unclear. Radio host Orson Welles publicly called on the unidentified officer, whom he dubbed “Officer X”, to come forward. A new Radio Diaries episode revisits Woodard’s story and the public outrage that followed, alongside a conversation with Marine Corps veteran Kyle Bibby, co-founder of the Black Veterans Project, about the experience of Black servicemembers today.