With his latest book, Tigerland, the tale of a segregated city getting its first African-American principle, Jack Gibbs and of the white basketball coach Bob Hart, choosing to settle in an East side neighborhood he was warned against. Haygood is fervent in his view that he is not an activist, however he is a prominent figure in the fight against anti-black racism in the past, and he continues to this even to today. Being born on a plantation in 1919, to seeing the first African American President Barack Obama, being elected in 2008. From plantation to ballot slip and a vote for Barack Obama.” (Haygood, 23) It is clear how much progress was experienced in Allen’s lifetime. As said in Butler: A Witness to History, “.but because this was America, once a land rife with Klansmen and lynching and second-class citizenship emblazoned in the laws, there really was no comparison.the leap felt in his (Eugene Allen) life felt epic as well. Written during then Senator Obama’s presidential campaign, he interviews Allen about the change in social relations across his career. Haygood’s most famous work, Butler: A Witness to History, retells the story of Eugene Allen, a man who worked in the White House for 34 years under eight US Presidents (Haygood, 7). Even to today, we can remain inspired by Haygood’s writing, and find solace in the stories of marginalized black Americans creating change, seeing progress, and making it through adversity, and derive hope from their stories. Race was inevitable but not necessarily an obstacle.” (Cayton, 347) He remains an inspirational figure for many through his retelling of the lives of many other African American people’s hardships and triumphs. This parallels Haygood's own experience with race which he viewed as, “.more as a source of pride rather than alienation.
(Wil Haygood, 1) Wil Haygood’s writing often centers around the trials and tribulations faced by black Americans before and during the Civil Rights era, and how they did not let racism hold them back from their goals and having an impact on the world.
He has been awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts (Wil, 1), Sunday Magazine Editors Award, New England Associated Press Award, and National Association for Black Journalist award for foreign reporting. Will Haygood is a critically acclaimed historian, journalist, and author of several books and one you may know by name, Butler: A Witness to History. By Patrick McCullough (Computer Science, Class of 2024)
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