Tigerland tells the story of two high school sports teams in 1968 who beat tremendous odds.
Tigerland tells the story of two high school sports teams in 1968 who beat tremendous odds.
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Sign up now to be a facilitator for Convocation 2018

Be among the first to receive Wil Haygood's book Tigerland

Wil Hagood

Miami alumnus and author Wil Haygood.

Yes. You can still sign up to be a facilitator during Convocation 2018. Be among the first to get Wil Haygood’s new book in this Miami debut.

This year is a little different. The group discussions will be based on a series of articles and multimedia resources that the summer reading committee assembled to prepare for Convocation, Aug. 24.

A Facilitator’s Guide will enable you to lead productive discussions

A facilitator meeting will be held at 4 p.m. Thursday, August 23, in 319 Kreger Hall to help prepare for the discussion groups 10:15-11 a.m. following Convocation.

Convocation begins at 9 a.m. Friday, Aug. 24, at the Freedom Summer Memorial. It is open to the public.

A 1976 Miami alumnus and faculty member in the department of media, journalism and film, Haygood will speak to this year’s incoming class.

Haygood’s new book, Tigerland: 1968-1969, A City Divided, a Nation Torn Apart, and a Magical Season of Healing, will be available to facilitators for pickup during the week of Convocation at Miami’s Brick & Ivy Campus Store.

Learn more about the debut of Tigerland at www.miamioh.edu/tigerland.

Tigerland is highly anticipated

It is an inspiring story of two teams from a segregated high school in Ohio who in the midst of the racial turbulence of 1968-1969 won the state basketball and baseball championships in the same year.

Following the assassinations that year of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, race relations in the U.S. were frayed. But in Columbus, Ohio, the Tigers of East High School stayed focused, defeating teams from better-resourced schools across the state. The Tigers’ pair of championships was an unprecedented feat in Class AA Ohio athletic history.

Haygood, a Columbus native, remembers seeing the teams play.

“The story reached out to me from my past,” he says. “It kept asking me to dig deeper and deeper into the fabric of our nation’s past. Although it’s about winning against stiff competition, it’s also a cultural history of our country.”

A former writer for The Boston Globe and The Washington Post, Haygood penned the story "A Butler Well Served by this Election" for The Post. The article became the basis for the award-winning 2013 film "The Butler" and for Haygood’s New York Times’ best-selling book of the same name. The Butler was translated into a dozen foreign languages.

In a special arrangement, Haygood's publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, agreed to a special early delivery of Tigerland at Miami; others will need to wait until its Sept. 18 publication.