With Understanding Comes Empathy

We will break down barriers to learning …

Columbus native Wil Haygood ’76, journalist and author of nine nonfiction books, including Tigerland, Colorization, and The Butler, which was made into a critically acclaimed film, received the 2022 Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award this fall from the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation. His vast body of work has “led readers to a better understanding of other cultures, people, religions, and political points of view.” In the following excerpts, Haygood talks about what he writes and why.

Wil Haygood ’76 with Winnie Mandela, wife of imprisoned Nelson Mandela, in South Africa in 1990 before the racially segregated system of apartheid fell.

“The history of America — much of the world even — is marked by a relentless struggle for peace. This is our hard climb. Where it concerns Black Americans and their quest for justice, I’ve been drawn to many stories, often stories missing from the history books. My real-life characters ask a simple question when it comes to peace: ‘Why can’t we all get along?’ ”

“It didn’t take too long after I reached The Boston Globe in 1984 that editors began sending me out across the country to report about complex issues. America seems to be in a constant sociocultural turmoil, so I wrote about economic malaise, racial battles, politicians like Bill Clinton and onetime segregationist governors George Wallace and Orval Faubus. I covered a lot of the American South, and it was always gratifying to go off the beaten road and find ‘undiscovered’ stories. I’ve always tried to dive inside a news story and pull out a human story.”

“If what I write — and I’m talking both books and journalism — empowers anyone at all, I think it is in the selection of stories I write, and the news that those stories bring. I remember landing in Los Angeles in the aftermath of the acquittal of the police officers who brutalized Black motorist Rodney King, and the city being full of fire and anger. You can tell the story of this country, sad to say, in its uprisings.”

“I don’t think it can get any more interesting than being a Black reporter riding alone across Louisiana with Ku Klux Klansman David Duke.”

“Every time there is a crisis in America — or elsewhere in the world — we anxiously await what words will be uttered by certain leaders. We have seen this with President Zelensky in Ukraine who has made some beautiful, brave, and heartbreaking speeches about saving his nation from tyranny. I’ve been in war zones, and I’ve seen how brutalized populations look to their leaders in times of crisis. I saw it up close with Nelson Mandela in South Africa. His calming words gave the whites who had been in power the confidence to remain in the country and help move the country from apartheid to democracy.”