In 1946, Isaac Woodard, a Black military sergeant on his method dwelling to South Carolina after serving in WWII, was pulled from a bus for arguing with the motive force. The native chief of police savagely beat him, leaving him unconscious and completely blind. The stunning incident made nationwide headlines and, when the police chief was acquitted by an all-white jury, the blatant injustice would change the course of American historical past. Based mostly on Richard Gergel’s e book Unexampled Braveness, the movie particulars how the crime led to the racial awakening of President Harry Truman, who desegregated federal workplaces and the navy two years later. The occasion additionally finally set the stage for the Supreme Courtroom’s landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Training choice, which lastly outlawed segregation in public faculties and jumpstarted the fashionable civil rights motion.