Renowned Author Wil Haygood to Give Memorial Lecture on April 11
Event Information
Time: Roundtable discussion at 4:15 p.m., followed by the lecture at 8 p.m.
Date: Thursday, April 11, 2019
Place: Roundtable in Room 209 and lecture in Room 101 of the Joe Rosenfield ’25 Center, 1115 Eighth Ave., Grinnell
Award-winning writer Wil Haygood will give the Armando Montaño Memorial Lecture on Thursday, April 11, as part of the Writers@Grinnell program at Grinnell College.
During his lecture Haygood will read from his newly published book Tigerland: 1968-1969: A City Divided, A Nation Torn Apart, and a Magical Season of Healing. This book tells the story of two teams from a poor, black, segregated high school in Columbus, Ohio, that defeated bigger, richer, whiter teams from across the state to win the Ohio state baseball and basketball championships.
These improbable victories took place during increasing protests against the Vietnam War and growing racial turbulence that escalated into riots across the country following the assassinations of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and presidential candidate Sen. Robert Kennedy, D-New York.
The Armando Montaño Memorial Lecture honors the memory and spirit of Armando Montaño ’12, a gifted journalist who died at the age of 22 in June 2012 in Mexico City, where he was working as an intern for the Associated Press.
His parents, Diane Alters ’71 and Mario Montaño, who endowed the lecture series, plan to attend again this year. The fund supports the Writers@Grinnell program in memory of their son’s dedication to nonfiction and fiction writing, journalism, and the creative process.
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Speaker Bio
Accomplished journalist and award-winning author Wil Haygood grew up in Columbus, Ohio, and enrolled in Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. He was determined to earn a spot on Miami’s basketball team, and though he never became a varsity player, his relentless pursuit of a dream would serve as a demonstration of the tenacity he’s shown throughout a prolific career.
He graduated from Miami in 1976 with a degree in urban planning. But his knack for storytelling led him to begin a career in journalism at The Charleston Gazette in West Virginia. Two years later he moved to The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. In 1984, Haygood became a staff writer at The Boston Globe, where he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and remained there several years before becoming a writer for The Washington Post.
As an investigative reporter, Haygood traveled all over the world, including France; Germany; India; South Africa, where he witnessed Nelson Mandela’s liberation from prison; and Somalia, where he was kidnapped and ransomed by rebels. While at The Washington Post, he wrote the article that inspired the 2013 award-winning motion picture The Butler, directed by Lee Daniels and starring Forest Whitaker and Oprah Winfrey.
Prior to Tigerland, Haygood authored seven nonfiction books, including prize-winning and critically acclaimed biographies of 20th-century figures:
- Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court Nomination that Changed America
- King of the Cats: the Life and Times of Adam Clayton Powell Jr.
- In Black and White: the Life of Sammy Davis Jr.
- Sweet Thunder: the Life and Times of Sugar Ray Robinson
Among his journalism honors are the National Headliner Award, the New England Associated Press Award, the Sunday Magazine Editors Award, the Paul L. Myhre Single Story Award, the Virginia Press Association Award, and the National Association of Black Journalists Award for both feature writing and foreign reporting.
Haygood currently serves as the Broadway Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence in the Department of Media, Journalism and Film at Miami University in Ohio.