Wil Haygood

Review: Showdown

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Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court Nomination That Changed America, Wil Haygood. New York: Vintage Books, 2016.

Summary: An account of the life of and rise to the Supreme Court of Thurgood Marshall structured around the five days of hearings in the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Probably the most shining legacy of the presidency of Lyndon Johnson were the advances he oversaw with civil rights against the opposition of southern Democrats in his own party. Among his foremost accomplishments was the appointment of the first Black Supreme Court Justice, Thurgood Marshall.

This work by Wil Haygood focuses on the showdown between Marshall and the southern members of the Senate Judiciary Committee opposed to his nomination during its hearings on the nomination before it was forwarded to the full Senate in the summer of 1967. The work is organized around the five days of hearings through which Haygood weaves the narrative of Marshall’s life. While the southern Senators on the Judiciary Committee could not block the nomination from going to the Senate, they employed strategies to slow it down and to cast sufficient aspersions on the character and judicial record of Marshall to jeopardize his confirmation.

James Eastland, the committee chairman, whose family had participated in a lynching and whose office was a shrine to the Confederacy had been thwarted in his own state by Marshall’s court efforts with the NAACP and was snubbed by Marshall, who refused to step into Eastland’s office to make a courtesy call. That office represented everything he had fought. Strom Thurmond, who had a black daughter, kept in secret until years later and Sam Ervin, known for his knowledge of the Constitution joined him. They tried to portray him soft on crime, trick him into discussing how he might rule on future cases, accused him of Communist associations and judicial activism and tried to make him look unschooled with arcane questions about the Constitution. Marshall, who had long dealt with wily white lawyers sidestepped the traps they set for him.

Against the backdrop of the hearings, Haygood tells the story of an extraordinary life. A descendent of slaves, Marshall grew up in Baltimore, went to Lincoln University as a classmate of Langston Hughes and excelled on the debate team, then to Howard University Law School. By 1936, he had joined the national staff of the NAACP, often traveling at great risk into the Jim Crow South. With the NAACP, he successfully argued 29 of 34 cases in the Supreme Court, notably Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka resulting in the desegregation of public schools. He gave critical leadership to the NAACP’s legal strategy to gain civil rights for Blacks. In 1961, President Kennedy name him to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. In 1965, President Johnson appointed him Solicitor General, where he won 14 of 19 cases that he argued.

Haygood more briefly summarizes his work on the court, touching on the hundreds of majority opinions and hundreds more dissents that he wrote, the clerkship of future Justice Elena Kagan–more discussion of his tenure on the bench and appraisal would have been helpful in rounding out the story. Marshall stepped down in 1991, dying two years later.

I could not help but think as I read of the opposition to the confirmation recently of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, whose confirmation, if anything was far more of a close run thing despite legal credentials that if anything exceeded those of Marshall. It is fifty-five years later, but it appears that if anything, we have regressed as a country. A mark of the courage of both justices was that they did not relent in the face of the distortions of their records and character that they had to face. Haygood captures the fortitude of Marshall throughout his legal career and during those five days of interrogation. Perhaps someday someone, maybe even Haygood, will do the same for Justice Jackson.

Review: The Haygoods of Columbus

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The Haygoods of Columbus: A Family Memoir, Wil Haygood. New York: Peter Davison Books/Houghton Mifflin, 1997 (The link is to a different, currently in-print edition).

Summary: A memoir of Haygood’s growing up years in Columbus, his extended family, the glory and decline of Mt. Vernon Avenue, and finding his calling as a writer.

Wil Haygood is a distinguished journalist and biographer, having written books on Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., Thurgood Marshall, Sugar Ray Robinson, and Sammy Davis, Jr. He wrote  “A Butler Well Served by This Election,” which served as the basis of the 2013 movie, The Butler, A Witness to History. And he grew up in my current home town of Columbus, Ohio.

This work is one of his earlier works, after becoming established as a journalist with The Boston Globe (he would later write for The Washington Post). In it, he describes what it was like to grow up in Columbus. It’s a story of fishing on the Olentangy River, living for a time with his mother in the Bolivar Arms Apartments (an urban renewal project), and aspiring to play basketball, even faking residency in several different school districts to get a chance to play. He was never very good, but got enough of an education to get into Miami University, where an injury ended his career, and he majored in literature.

The book is subtitled “a family memoir,” and is as much about his family as anything. His parents met in the South and his father Jack, who eventually divorced his mother, Elvira, moved to Columbus because several relatives had jobs there. Elvira followed, Wil and his twin sister Wonder were born, and after the divorce, they moved into Elvira’s parents, Jimmy and Emily Burke. It’s a story of a troubled family. Haygood often didn’t know if Elvira would return from her jaunts on Mt. Vernon Avenue. His step-brother, “Macaroni” was a pimp and a hustler who only could evade the law so long. Another brother, Harry, had dreams of stardom, ending up in a homeless camp in Marin County. I suspect the influence of Jimmy and Emily, hard-working folks who owned their home in Weinland Park may have rubbed off on Wil. Often, it was will, after he was established, who would send money, and help one or another when they were down.

It’s a story about the glory days and decline of Mt. Vernon Avenue, a main street running east from downtown Columbus (before the freeways) that was the cultural heart of the Black community–theaters, jazz joints, groceries, restaurants and clothing shops and churches. Haygood focuses on Carl Brown’s grocery. Brown established his presence by hauling fresh produce, overpriced in other stores, from the South. He describes a chain competitor that came in, and rapidly went under, and Brown’s attempts to hang on, which he did until his death, employing many youth in his store over the years.

It was also the location of The Call & Post, a black weekly newspaper under editor Amos Lynch, one of those who sought to keep Mt. Vernon Avenue alive. After graduation, Haygood attempted a career at acting, ended up back in Columbus working odd jobs, and finally, on a whim applied at The Call & Post. He had a tryout that failed, but Lynch liked his energy and called him back. He covered sports and the courts, and leveraged the position into jobs in Charleston, West Virginia, Pittsburgh, and eventually with The Boston Globe, for whom he was writing at the time of the book.

These three elements, the bonds of family even when it gets messy, the fabric of community, and the finding of calling weave together in Haygood’s account. Along the way, one glimpses the life of Columbus back in the 1950’s to 1980’s (we moved here in 1990), so it was a rich account of the backstory of our adopted home town (complete with Mayor Sensenbrenner, Woody Hayes, old downtown landmarks and Scioto Downs). I identify with the sadness of witnessing the decline of community–the story of Mt. Vernon Avenue could be the story of Market Street or Mahoning Avenue where I grew up–once-vibrant communities that are shadows of their former selves. One reflects on the mystery of finding one’s calling–how an aspiring basketball player ends up a journalist and biographer–the family influences, mentors, and the chance event of submitting an application on a whim. Finally, there are these mysterious bonds of family, a boy finding the love he longed for in his mother and father in his grandparents, how a family deals with its “black sheep” and those who struggle to find themselves, hoping that they will find redemption as “Macaroni” eventually did.

Haygood and I are the same age. His memoir makes me reflect on how the places, people, and times of our lives help shape the people we are. Our stories are different, to be sure, but the elements are not. This memoir helps me understand not only the place where I live but perhaps myself a bit better.

Review: Tigerland

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Tigerland

Tigerland: 1968-1969: A City Divided, A Nation Torn Apart, and a Magical Season of Healing, Wil Haygood. New York: Knopf, (Forthcoming September 18), 2018.

Summary: The story of the 1968-69 East High School Tigers championship basketball and baseball teams at a black high school in segregated Columbus, Ohio during the tumultuous aftermath of the killing of Martin Luther King, Jr.

I’m a Columbus, Ohio transplant, and like many, know little of the city’s history, even sports history, beyond Ohio State football. But I love history, and sports, and so when Wil Haygood’s new book on the legendary East High School Tiger basketball and baseball teams came up for review, I snagged a copy.

Columbus, Ohio in 1968 had a segregated school system. And it was far from equal. Facilities, text books, and sports facilities at black East High School were inferior to other schools. The death of Martin Luther King, Jr. hit the community hard. King had preached regularly at Union Grove Baptist Church. What would happen among the students in the high school that was the centerpiece of that community?

This book tells the story of the leadership of three men at East High School. Jack Gibbs was the black principal of the school, Bob Hart, the white basketball coach, and Paul Pennell, the white baseball coach. All three were marked by a deep concern for their students and players, and their families. Gibbs tirelessly advocated for the school, and even found a way to transport families to the basketball championship against Canton McKinley. Both coaches recognized the raw talent of the black athletes and convinced them they could be champions.

The book also is a narrative of the championship season of each team, divided into Part One for the basketball team, and Part Two for the baseball team. Two of the basketball players, Eddie “the Rat” Ratleff and Bo Pete Lamar were later college All-Americans in the same year and Ratleff played on the 1972 U.S. Olympic team. Personal stories of the players mix with game accounts leading up to the state championships for each team (Ratleff played on both). He tells us the story of the subsequent lives of a number of these figures–both good and painful.

Haygood, who has written biographies of Thurgood Marshall, Sammy Davis, Sugar Ray Robinson, and Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. and a family memoir on growing up in Columbus, brings his knowledge of the city and the history of race in the U.S. together in this work. He sets the story of the Tigers against backdrop of the racial segregation in the city, including the court ruling by Black judge Robert Duncan, upheld in the Supreme Court desegregating Columbus schools. He narrates a challenged, yet vibrant Black community centered around churches, the schools, and Mt Vernon Avenue businesses. He weaves enough of the national history in–from King to Jackie Robinson to give context.

There is a tendency on the part of some to want to isolate sports from the issues of race in our country. There is also a tendency to focus our discourse on race at a national level and forget that real progress has to find expression in each of our local contexts. Heygood weaves sport and racial history together, as well as the challenges we face as a nation and the possibilities in our local communities. He makes us consider who will be the Jack Gibbs, the Bob Hart, the Paul Pennell of our day.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.