Wil Haygood was born and raised in Columbus, Ohio, graduated from Franklin Heights High School and then attended Miami University in Oxford, Ohio where he earned a degree in Urban Studies in 1976. He then began work as a reporter for the Call & Post, an African American newspaper in Cleveland. He moved on to the Charleston Gazette, the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, and then became a staff writer at the Boston Globe in 1984. He remained there for seventeen years before becoming a writer for the Washington Post in 2002.
Washington Post
While at the Washington Post, he wrote “A Butler Well Served by this Election” in 2008, an article that highlighted White House butler Eugene Allen that became the basis for the award-winning film The Butler.
The Biographer
He is well known as a biographer, for Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court Nomination that Changed America in 2015, as well as earlier biographies of Adam Clayton Powell (King of the Cats), Sammy Davis, Jr (In Black and White), Sugar Ray Robinson (Sweet Thunder), and Eugene Allen (The Butler). As with all great biographies, Wil’s books paint an evocative portrait of the time and place where events occurred.
Publishing Group
The Haygoods of Columbus
He also wrote with fondness about his hometown. The Haygoods of Columbus: A Love Story is a 1997 family memoir recording his upbringing in Columbus and his complex, loving relationship with his family against the backdrop of the city’s changing Black community. It blends personal narrative with a historical look at his neighborhood, detailing his journey from childhood to becoming a writer.
Houghton Mifflin
Tigerland
Haygood’s 2018 book Tigerland: 1968–1969: A City Divided, A Nation Torn Apart, And A Magical Season of Healing tells the story of the East High School Tigers, an all-Black team that won both the state basketball and baseball championships in the same year. The book chronicles the team’s improbable success as a source of unity and healing for a divided city.
Publishing Group
The War Within a War
Wil’s latest book, The War Within a War: The Black Struggle in Vietnam and at Home (2026) describes the experiences of Black soldiers and their families navigating racial injustice in America while fighting the war in Vietnam. It highlights the disproportionate death rate of Black soldiers, the rise of racial tension in the military, and the fight for voting rights at home.
Publishing Group
Drawing on the lives of soldiers, officers, doctors, nurses, journalists, & politicians, Haygood illuminates a generation caught between the battle on the front lines and another for justice in America. He also highlights how African American soldiers distinguished themselves with their actions while serving their country. Some of the soldiers he references hailed from Columbus, including the young Marine featured on the book’s cover, Skip Dunn.
Haygood’s Awards and Honors
Wil Haygood is a fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and is the Broadway Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence in the Department of Media, Journalism & Film at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Among his journalism honors are the National Headliner Award for outstanding feature writing, the New England Associated Press Award, the Sunday Magazine Editors Award, the Paul L. Myhre Single Story Award, the Virginia Press Association Award, and the National Association of Black Journalist Award for both feature writing and foreign reporting.
He won the Ohioana Book Award for nonfiction for The Haygoods of Columbus: A Love Story in 1998, and the 2016 Scribe Book Award from the American Society of Legal Writers for Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court Nomination that Changed America. His 2018 book Tigerland: 1968–1969: A City Divided, A Nation Torn Apart, And A Magical Season Of Healing was the runner-up for the 2019 Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Nonfiction. In 2022, Haygood was chosen as the recipient of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize’s Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award.
