Haygood to chronicle East’s title teams of ’69
In his previous books, Wil Haygood has told the stories of influential African-Americans, including entertainer Sammy Davis Jr., Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and Eugene Allen, a longtime White House butler.
His next work, however, will center on a group of much more modest characters: black athletes attending East High School during the 1968-69 school year.
It’s “an epic story,” he said — the basketball and baseball teams won Ohio state championships 55 days apart — and one that hits much closer to home for Haygood, who grew up in Columbus. He attended East for his sophomore year in 1969-70 before graduating from Franklin Heights High School on the Hilltop.
During the past 2½ years of research and interviewing roughly 125 people, Haygood has been fascinated by what he’s uncovered for his project titled “Tigerland: The Miracle on East Broad Street.”
The 62-year-old author, who lives in Washington, D.C., plans to finish the piece during the Patrick Henry Writing Fellowship he was recently awarded by Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland. He’ll live on campus from August to May 2018.
“It’s a story about this nation and how we got to where we are now,” Haygood said. “It’s a story about courage — a story about a dream that was seemingly shot down on a hotel balcony in Memphis, Tennessee, but a group of athletes and school teachers and students at an all-black school on the East Side of Columbus, Ohio, said to themselves the dream is more alive now than ever.”
The book takes place in the aftermath of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in Memphis in April 1968 and under the veil of severe racial tensions as the civil-rights movement marched forward.
“I really admire people like these athletes,” Haygood said. “They did their jobs that year and in their own way, held a city together.
“I wake up some mornings and I can’t wait to get started working on the book.”
The fellowship is typically granted to writers who reach a broad audience and focus on the American Revolution, the nation’s founding ideas or their effects on the past and present, said Patrick Nugent, deputy director of the C. V. Starr Center for the American Experience, at Washington College.
“It focuses on a climactic year in American history,” Nugent said of “Tigerland.”
“In 1968, so much change was going on. Instead of the usual top-down, helicopter-view, Wil gives a finely focused narrative grounded in one community, one school, one locker room.”
Nugent said he also appreciated that the story takes place in Columbus and isn’t the usual setting for civilrights narratives. Generally, such accounts take place in the South or larger, Northern cities, such as Chicago and Washington, where major riots broke out.
“This suggests that this was happening all over the country,” Nugent said.
Plus, the college recognized the notoriety of Haygood, who is the first fellow whose work has been turned into a movie. His essay on Allen was the basis for the 2013 film “The Butler.”
Garnett Davis thinks a movie could be made out of his high-school’s story, but he’s grateful Haygood is telling it regardless of whether it makes it to the big screen. Davis, 67, who lives in Westerville, was a senior captain on the baseball team in 1969.
“I look back 50 years and think how did we do it with that team,” said Davis, acknowledging that the previous year’s team was more talented. “One thing about winning the state title was we couldn’t perform if not for the other players. We needed everybody we had.”
A three-sport athlete (football, basketball and baseball), Davis said such activities were the key to the survival and success of young, poor black men in the area, providing many of them an opportunity to attend college.