Despite the title of this episode talking about the blinding of Isaac Woodard, this only makes up the first half hour of this two hour documentary. Following this horrible case, the film follows the evolution of the civil rights movement. In particular, it focuses much on President Truman and Judge Waring, the man who oversaw the trial of the policeman who blinded Woodard. Then in the final portion of the show, it focuses on the overturning of Plessy v. Ferguson...the case that legalized segregation.

Overall, this is a very good overview of this period before Martin Luther King and the bus boycott...a period where you might think nothing was happening regarding civil rights. Well worth seeing.

This is actually an interesting court case. A Black man discharged from the army takes a bus ride home. He asks the bus driver to stop at a reststop. The driver is irritated by his attitude and they have an oral fight. The bus driver contacts the local police. A White officer hits Woodard with a baton and there are disagreements about when he hit him and how many times. The cop claims he only hit him once as he was a drunkard making trouble. Public alcohol consumption may have been illegal here. Woodard claims they set him up and that he was beaten multiple times. What we know is that he became blind from some strikes, but not how it happened. Frankly the documentary is terrible at giving us even the basic facts. It gets silly. We hear a few claims from people interviewed like "he told me they poured alcohol on him in his cell". Did he really claim this? Was this brought up in court? Why are we only getting this single factoid on what may have happened? It's all obscured.

Political activists tell Truman the story to outrage him and make him support Black activist groups - this works extremely well and he becomes a civil right activists for Black people. The government forces the state to prosecute the cop. But the federal prosecutors only have Woodard tell his story and call no witnesses. So it's he said, he said stuff where the cop has an alternative story. And basically it's up to the jury to pick a story to believe as both can't be true. And it's not even clear how much Woodard said in court. Again the documentary doesn't tell this part. We have A TON of modern Black race activists constantly say stuff like "White Americans are racist" and "White Americans, even today, don't understand what racism is". I get they believe that and you can pick a few such statements, but this is basically half the documentary and this is why there is no time to present evidence. The history of the case is presented in mini segments of 1 minute each about every 15 minutes for only the first 45 min. You will learn more about this case by reading a short article on it. Honestly it's an embarrassment to Woodard and his suffering.

Now, viewers still don't know what happened as they don't explain it. But what we see here is that the state just didn't have a single witness even though the bus passengers may have seen the event. So either there were no decent witnesses supporting these claims or the state made a giant mess of the case. When initially reading the main story I felt horrible for Woodard. But after seeing seeing this I actually think a not guilty verdict makes sense. If you have a bunch of people who saw the supposed crime and then don't call a single one in I would assume the state was hiding evidence. And even if you fully trust the prosecutors you would not know what side to believe when it was just stories. Both the stories seem clear and concise. A drunk man was acting out and bullying the bus driver and then when cops were called they had to restrict him? Or a Black man claims that a White racist beat him for no good reason. Both stories make logical sense and could happen in real life. And since no witnesses were called we don't even know if the cop was racist or not. Was he a member of any racist group? Surely the jury cannot just assume it to be the case when the prosecutors don't even try to present witnesses saying this. You would actually assume he was not racist as if he was the federal lawyers would show some clear and direct evidence of this. We are talking about top tier lawyers here. Maybe they had way more evidence in real life? Maybe the jury overlooked something? If I was a jury member I would be utterly confused and not know what side was telling the truth. But I also think it's the documentary making a mess of it and that in real life the case was a bit more easy to understand no matter what actually happened. Either the documentary is hiding evidence supporting the alternative story or they are too inexperienced to present all the main evidence supporting their "White men were super racist" story. Either explanation makes them look bad. And as the documentary is 80% about White racism claims it falls apart as this was the case to "prove" that the South was racist yet the court case itself proves no such thing as presented here. The rest of the documentary feels like propaganda instead of a clear and concise story rooted in clear evidence.

I can't really say why the case itself maybe gets 20 minutes here at most. I adore court case dramas. I watch even mediocre stories on this and in USA they mainly make these Black crime documentaries and don't really focus on other cases so I watch this race stuff a lot even though I like court stuff overall. And unfortunately this documentary is NOT about the court case. But it's perfect for super progressive viewers just looking for some pundit stuff and giant claims of cultural racism. But I don't know how much of this is true as they often rely on anecdotes. After 45 min they stop talking about the case and it becomes utterly pointless.

Our racist history is brought to light in this documentary about black veterans returning from WWII (one in particular) and brutal reception they were given. The "police" were instrumental in enforcing Jim Crow and white southerners were threatened by black veterans who had helped defeat fascism and experienced little racism in Europe. Two couples were murdered for voting.

The documentary shows how the NAACP with future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall used media and Orson Welles to bring light to these injustices.

This is the kind of thing republicans don't want taught. It might make white kids sad. And shows the racist history of policing in this country.