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Hey, history lovers.

I'm Mike Rosenwald with Retropod, a show about the past, rediscovered.

In an age of fierce polarization in politics, it seems particularly impossible to change

anyone's minds.

But history has shown that in politics anyone's minds.

But history has shown that in politics, sometimes minds do change.

Take President Harry Truman, for example.

His transformation from segregationists to civil rights advocate was nothing short of astonishing. Truman was born nearly 20 years after the end of the Civil

War. He was a farm boy raised in a segregated town in Missouri, which was once pro-slavery. His grandparents

had been slave owners. His mother hated President Abraham Lincoln. Truman himself had horribly racist views.

In his letters, he would often refer to people of color by derogatory slurs.

So when he became president in 1945, after Franklin Roosevelt's death, Southern members of Congress

were delighted.

They thought he'd be sympathetic

to segregationists. They were wrong. The pivotal moment came in the summer of 1946 when a black

military officer named R.R. Wright wrote a letter to Truman. Wright informed the president of an attack on a

Black World War II veteran named Isaac Woodard. Woodard had been pulled off a bus in South

Carolina months earlier and was beaten and blinded by the police chief. That letter struck a nerve

with Truman.

He had a soft spot for soldiers.

...