Journalist and author Wil Haygood will leave his collected works, notes and documents to his alma mater, Miami University. He made the unexpected announcement while accepting the university's Freedom Summer of '64 Award.
"It's probably one of the more robust collections of this type of material amassed by any single writer anywhere on this subject matter," Haygood said. "It is my goal that students, scholars from Europe or Africa or anywhere, are able to come to Miami and look at this collection."
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Haygood graduated from Miami University in 1976 before embarking on a life of storytelling on everything from the Berlin Wall and Nelson Mandela's release from prison and rise to president of South Africa to the 1992 civil unrest in Los Angeles and the 20th anniversary of the March on Washington. He was a Pulitzer Prize finalist at the Boston Globe and later went on to the Washington Post. One of his articles there became the basis for the 2013 award-winning motion picture The Butler, directed by Lee Daniels and starring Forest Whitaker and Oprah Winfrey.
Haygood is also the author of several books, including biographies of Thurgood Marshall, Sammy Davis Jr, Sugar Ray Robinson and others. His acclaimed work Tigerland is the historical retelling of how a basketball team from segregated East High School in his hometown of Columbus, Ohio, found success after overcoming enormous obstacles. The book is set in context of the racially charged '60s and weaves its events against the backdrop of the national Civil Rights movement.
The Wil Haygood Collection
According to a statement from Miami University, the Wil Haygood Collection includes early drafts of some of his books, interviews, behind-the-scenes movie notes, photos from his world travels, letters from world leaders and public figures, and more.
Haygood says he's donating the collection in honor of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, and in tribute to Rick Momeyer. Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner were civil rights activists who were murdered while participating in Freedom Summer in 1964. In June 1964, hundreds of college students trained at Western College for Women — now part of Miami University — before going to Mississippi to do voter registration. Momeyer also was a volunteer who helped train the Freedom Summer volunteers before they left from Oxford, Ohio, to go to Mississippi. The story of the three men was the basis for the 1988 crime thriller movie Mississippi Burning.
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Haygood's first national assignment was covering the 20th anniversary of the killings of Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner.
"When I stepped on campus in 1972, I did not know anything about Freedom Summer," Haygood said. "As I became a reporter and as I was going to the South, I started reading the civil rights giants — Bob Moses, Dorothy Height, etc. — and the conversations so often turned to Freedom Summer. I knew I had gone to school and lived in a town that had a connection to Freedom Summer.
"I hope Miami University can find room maybe to honor civil rights and what this work has meant to me," he said at the ceremony. "It is my life."
