It was a racial assault so vicious that it became one of the early chords of the civil rights movement, and led to the desegregation of the military.

Sgt. Isaac Woodard Jr., 26, was a decorated African-American veteran. He had just been honorably discharged from the United States Army in 1946 and was headed home to Winnsboro, S.C. Still in uniform, Mr. Woodard, was forcibly removed from the bus, brutally beaten and jailed by the white police chief in the town of Batesburg.

But in the small town where Mr. Woodard was beaten so severely that he lost his sight, the crime went unpunished and largely faded from memory. Almost three generations later, a black Army veteran in Georgia and a white federal judge in South Carolina separately stumbled upon Mr. Woodard’s story and vowed to honor his memory.

On Saturday afternoon, town and civic leaders and groups of veterans will walk the two blocks from the bus stop to the jail where Mr. Woodard was taken to honor his memory and acknowledge the cruelty that was done to him. Part of the trickle of small towns throughout the country confronting their violent, racist histories, the town of 5,000 — now called Batesburg-Leesville — will unveil a historic marker downtown as a permanent reminder of the racial injustice that happened there.