Author Wil Haygood to speak at College Sept. 21
Campus News | Wednesday, August 15, 2018
Award-winning author and journalist Wil Haygood will speak on the Columbus State Community College campus about his new book “Tigerland 1968-1969: A City Divided, a Nation Torn Apart, and a Magical Season of Healing.” The book, from Penguin Random House, will be released on Sept. 18.
Tickets are free but required for the Sept. 21 appearance. Tickets are available here on a first come, first served basis.
This will be Columbus native Haygood’s third visit to the Columbus Campus. He was a featured speaker in 2013 during the college’s 50th anniversary celebration. He spoke again in 2015 during the launch of his previous book examining the life and career of Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.
His latest non-fiction project is centered in Columbus. The publisher’s narrative says it’s “an emotional, inspiring story of two teams from a poor, black, segregated high school in Ohio, who, in the midst of the racial turbulence of 1968-1969, win the Ohio state baseball and basketball championships in the same year…Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy are assassinated. Race relations are frayed like never before. Cities are aflame as demonstrations and riots proliferate. But in Columbus, the Tigers of segregated East High School win the baseball and basketball championships, defeating bigger, richer, whiter teams across the state. Now, Wil Haygood gives us a spirited and stirring account of this improbable triumph and takes us deep into the personal lives of these local heroes.”
Haygood is currently a Visiting Distinguished Professor at Miami University. His career as a journalist included positions with The Boston Globe and The Washington Post. As an author he has penned several biographies, including the best-seller The Butler: A Witness to History, which was turned into a prize-winning motion picture that starred Academy Award winners Forest Whitaker, Oprah Winfrey, Jane Fonda, and Cuba Gooding Jr.
Haygood will speak Friday, Sept. 21 at noon in the Nestor Hall Auditorium, 488 Mt. Vernon Ave., Columbus. A book signing will follow his presentation.
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