Wil Haygood to launch latest book, ‘The War Within a War: The Black Struggle in Vietnam and at Home,’ at Miami University
The award-winning author and journalist explores how the war became a mirror for Black Americans fighting for freedom abroad while demanding equality at home
Wil Haygood to launch latest book, ‘The War Within a War: The Black Struggle in Vietnam and at Home,’ at Miami University
Wil Haygood will launch “The War Within a War: The Black Struggle in Vietnam and at Home” at Miami University in February. It is his 10th nonfiction book.
The acclaimed author and journalist explores how the war became a mirror for the struggle of Black Americans — fighting for freedom abroad while demanding equality at home. It offers a powerful lens through which to understand the racial and political divides that continue to shape American life, according to publisher Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Penguin Random House.
This is Haygood’s third book to be launched at Miami, after 2018’s “Tigerland: 1968-1969: A City Divided, A Nation Torn Apart, and a Magical Season of Healing” and 2021’s “Colorization: One Hundred Years of Black Films in a White World.”
“The books I write are books I know I would have loved to have read when I was a student at Miami,” said Haygood, who graduated from the university in 1976. “Nothing gives me more pleasure than to be able to share my work with the Miami students. I look at all of them walking across campus, studying at King Library, and I am them.”
A special event, “An Evening with Wil Haygood: Commemorating 60 years of the Vietnam War,” will be held from 6:30-8 p.m. Feb. 17 in Hall Auditorium.
The event — free and open to the public — will feature a conversation with Haygood and his editor, Peter Gethers, along with Dorothy Harris of Cincinnati and Dr. Elbert Nelson of Columbus, Georgia. The nurse and doctor, respectively, who both now reside in Cincinnati, are featured in the book that explores the Vietnam War, democracy, and the Civil Rights Movement.
Miami plans to give away signed books to attendees at Haygood events during the week he is in Oxford. He is scheduled to meet with students, faculty, and others at various times.
Early accolades
The book has landed on Publishers Weekly’s Top 10 in the history category for the spring book season. It’s also featured on Literary Hub’s list of Most Anticipated Books of 2026 and is featured on the cover of Veterans Breakfast Club (VBC) Magazine.
Haygood said it will be wonderful sharing this story with Miami students “because these soldiers were their age.”
Among them were “six of our best and brightest” from Haygood’s Columbus neighborhood, including high school sports star Skip Dunn, who is featured on the book’s cover in his Marine Corps fatigues.
Haygood was between seventh and eighth grade when he noticed Dunn — a teen who lived across the street and showed him how to toss horseshoes in the summer — wasn’t around to give his usual friendly greeting when he came outside. Haygood’s sister told him he went to Vietnam.
Five from the neighborhood, including Dunn, came home alive, but one young man, Robert Morris, did not.
“I had a very touching day when I went over to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial here in Washington and looked up his name on the wall,” Haygood recalled. He called his sister in Columbus to tell her he was standing in front of Morris’s name, and “she literally started crying on the telephone."
His most timely book
Kirkus Reviews offered this advance praise: “A searing history of the Black experience in Vietnam.”
Richard Rhodes, Pulitzer Prize winner of “The Making of the Atomic Bomb,” said in a blurb: “With this book, Wil Haygood has become the preeminent chronicler of the Black experience in America.”
And Gilbert King, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Devil in the Grove,” wrote in a blurb: “Wil Haygood writes with empathy and moral clarity, illuminating the lives of Black Americans whose experiences in Vietnam revealed the unfinished struggle for equality at home. ‘The War Within a War’ is both history and reckoning, told with uncommon grace.’”
The author spent four and a half years doing research for “The War Within a War,” traveling to interview soldiers — Black and white, men and women — who served in the Vietnam War.
“I have talked to so many soldiers and some have looked at me with tears in their eyes telling me if, for nothing else, the book is needed as a historical reminder of what the Black soldier has meant to the freedom of this country,” Haygood said.
He called this his most timely book.
“I can’t tell you how many generals I have talked to as I was doing this book, especially during this past year — Black and white generals — how appalled they are that there are forces out there trying to wipe away history,” he said.
Haygood dedicated the book to Miami President Gregory Crawford, “who understood this mission,” and retired Army General Dennis Via, “who opened doors.”
President Crawford called it a “profound honor personally.” In a letter that is included in the Miami branded version of Haygood’s book that will be distributed to event attendees, President Crawford wrote that he was immediately drawn to the book “because it illuminates the fraught meaning of freedom during one of the most turbulent decades in American history.
“One pivotal moment was Freedom Summer of 1964, when young Americans gathered at Western College for Women, now part of Miami University, to train to register Black voters in the South. Their courage is constantly upheld on Miami’s Oxford campus, in residence hall lobbies named for the fallen activists and in the Freedom Summer Memorial, both on the Western campus,” he wrote.
President Crawford added, “Like Wil’s earlier works, ‘The War Within a War’ showcases people who fought for the freedoms we enjoy today while calling us to dedicate ourselves to the great task remaining. As always, he challenges us to face history with honesty and courage.”
Haygood said that, to his knowledge, “this is the first book that really dives deep, and it goes back and forth into Vietnam and into Mississippi, into Vietnam, and into Chicago, into Vietnam, and then back to Los Angeles.”
Haygood described the situation then as combustible because the Black soldiers were just coming out of segregation and being asked to go to a foreign country to fight for their country that kept them in second-class citizenship.
“Many of them joined. A lot were drafted so they had no choice,” he said. “But then you were being asked to defend a nation where still in many parts of the South, your mother, father, aunt, and uncle were being stymied in their right to vote.”
‘Looking deep into the Black experience’
Miami University honored Haygood in 2023 with the Freedom of ’64 Award. The award — given each year to a distinguished leader who has inspired the nation to advance civil rights and social justice — recognized the spirit of the 800 volunteers who trained at Oxford’s Western College of Women, now part of Miami’s Western campus.
During acceptance remarks that included him sharing his career journey and acknowledging those who’ve inspired him along the way, Haygood announced that the Wil Haygood Collection, which contains thousands of items and documents from his storied career, will be given to his alma mater.
Among Haygood’s award-winning books are biographies of U.S. Rep. Adam Clayton Powell Jr., Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, entertainer Sammy Davis Jr., and White House butler Eugene Allen. All played roles in the Civil Rights Movement.
Haygood expanded his 2008 story, "A Butler Well Served by this Election" for the Washington Post into the book, "The Butler," which was the basis of the 2013 movie.
“I like to think that my reach is certainly looking deep into the Black experience, but it’s also looking at the country itself, at the history of this country, and at the facts of this country of how we got from the founding of the country nearly 250 years ago to this date and time right now,” he said.
“I’m just very curious how a nation has come of age and also how a nation hasn’t been able to equitably grapple with the problem of race.”
Haygood never served in the military, but before his time at the Washington Post, he was a national and foreign correspondent for 17 years at the Boston Globe, where he became a Pulitzer Prize finalist. While covering the civil war in Somalia in 1990, he was taken hostage by rebels and eventually released with the aid of Pakistani troops.
“I’ve been shot at and I’ve been taken hostage. I’m not talking about war from the vantage point of somebody sitting in a comfortable chair talking about war. I have been there,” he said. “I have seen the bravery of U.S. soldiers. They helped get me out of several tough situations, so I have a lot of respect for U.S. soldiers. It is a hard job.”
Haygood continued, “We have been in more than a few wars in this country and, for some reason, when the history of those wars gets written, the role of African American soldiers is often left out.”
The book will help people better understand what it was like for these Black military service personnel who served.
“When we try to repair the historical record, it is going to serve future generations better with their knowledge of what really happened in these wars,” he said.
A decade as a Miami scholar-in-residence
Haygood has been the Boadway Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence in Miami’s Department of Media, Journalism, and Film since 2014-2015.
This spring he will be co-teaching a War Stories course with Rosemary Pennington, chair and professor of Journalism.
“War Stories is focused on the histories, ethics, and practices of war reporters,” she said. “Students will examine how war reporters do their jobs and also consider how media shape our memories of conflict.”
Pennington continued, “Wil Haygood is an ideal person to co-teach this course. He spent years reporting on conflicts in such places as Somalia, Equatorial Guinea, and Nigeria, so he has firsthand experience of what it's like to chase a story as bullets fly.”
During the first half of the semester, students will study ideas related to war reporting and then learn from Haygood about what it's like to be on the ground. In the second half, the class will read and discuss his new book.
“Wil is a gifted reporter and storyteller and War Stories is an opportunity for Miami journalism students to learn from one of the best,” Pennington said.
Hayood said he has enjoyed being the scholar-in-residence for a decade, especially interacting with students striving to become journalists.
“I enjoy the students. I enjoy seeing the looks on their faces when I say I was outside the prison when Nelson Mandela was released, in the middle of the Rodney King riots, or covering Hurricane Katrina for 33 straight days with no day off,” he said, noting other examples of landing in a war zone and sleeping on rooftops so he wouldn’t get hit by sniper fire.
“All of these experiences, I can see minute-by-minute students learning from them,” he said. “And the letters students write me are so poignant and so touching, it makes me happy to do what I do.”
Established in 1809, Miami University is located in Oxford, Ohio, with regional campuses in Hamilton and Middletown, a learning center in West Chester, and a European study center in Luxembourg. Interested in learning more about Department of Media, Journalism, and Film? Visit the website for more information.
