AT A GLANCE
Endowed Lecture: Wil Haygood
When: Tuesday, Jan 21, at 7:30 p.m. Doors open at 6:30 p.m.
Where: Cole Hall, Bridgewater College
Notes: This event is free and open to the public.
Acclaimed journalist, author and civil rights historian Wil Haygood will deliver the keynote address for Bridgewater College’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day Celebration on Tuesday, Jan. 21, at 7:30 p.m. in Cole Hall. Haygood will discuss his award-winning book “Tigerland: 1968-1969: A City Divided, a Nation Torn Apart, and a Magical Season of Healing.”
As an author, Haygood has chronicled the civil rights movement and the lives of its well-known figures. “Tigerland,” which was published in 2018, is set against the backdrop of a divisive time in American history and tells the story of baseball and basketball teams at a segregated high school in Columbus, Ohio, that won back-to-back state championships. The book won the 2019 Ohioana Book Award and was runner-up for the 2019 Dayton Literary Peace Price in Nonfiction.
Haygood began his career in journalism and worked for The Boston Globe and The Washington Post. He reported on national and foreign affairs and covered Nelson Mandela’s liberation after 27 years of imprisonment, Hurricane Katrina and the election of former President Barack Obama. Haygood is best known for writing the 2008article in The Washington Post, “A butler well served by this election,” which inspired the 2013 award-winning film “The Butler.”
Haygood’s journalistic awards include a National Association of Black Journalists Award for Foreign Reporting and a New England Associated Press Award, and he was a finalist for the 1991 Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing. In 2022, he received the Ambassador Richard Holbrooke Lifetime Distinguished Achievement Award, a prestigious literary award that has also been presented to former President Jimmy Carter and “The Handmaid’s Tale” author Margaret Atwood.
This endowed lecture is sponsored by the W. Harold Row Symposium on Reconciliation and the Harold H. Hersch Educational Fund and is co-presented by the Department of Student Life and the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.
For the endowed lecture, doors open at 6:30 p.m. with the event starting at 7:30 p.m. The format for the event is a traditional lecture with a Q&A. A book signing will follow the lecture at 8:30 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.
Media Contact:
Eli Quay
Communications and Media Relations Specialist
equay3@bridgewater.edu
(540) 828-5486
01/09/25
