President Greg Crawford
Hello. I'm Greg Crawford, president of Miami University, and welcome to "In Such a Place," the podcast where we explore the future of higher education and the vital role colleges and universities play in shaping our world. Today we are joined by Miami alumnus, Wil Haygood. Pulitzer Prize finalist, award-winning author, and one of the nation's most respected journalists and biographers. Wil has spent decades reporting on pivotal moments in history, and he's also entrusted Miami with the Wil Haygood collection, a remarkable archive of his life's work, ensuring that future students and scholars can explore the stories that shaped our nation. We'll discuss what history teaches us about resilience and leadership, how storytelling can inspire change and connect generations and Wil's newest book, "The War Within a War," which examines the struggles Black Americans faced during the Vietnam War and back at home. Welcome to the podcast, Wil.

Wil Haygood
Thank you, great to be here.

President Greg Crawford
You've said that Miami University changed the course of your life when you think back to arriving on campus as an undergraduate, what did Miami give you that you didn't know you needed?

Wil Haygood
There was a certain intensity to the experience of learning. You just felt the rush of knowledge coming at you every day, every week, every month, and it was thrilling to have so much newness being poured into your brain. And it was just the notion that you are here to learn and most everything else is secondary. And that was thrilling, because I love to read, and I I love to to have a goal of getting good grades. And so it really was, it was new, because I was the first person in my family to go to college, and so nobody back home had had that experience. And then when I would call them on the weekends and explain things to them about what happened in this geography class or that English literature class or that history class, they tell me to this day that there was a whole lot of thrill in my voice, a whole lot of excitement, because it was new, not only for me, but it was new for my family to have someone away at college.

President Greg Crawford
And now tell us about how you picked Miami. You're from Columbus, Ohio--

Wil Haygood
Yes.

President Greg Crawford
So you probably knew a little bit about the school, but what was going through your head as a high school student on why Miami?

Wil Haygood
Yes, I knew nothing about the school, until one day at Franklin Heights High School, I went into the counselor's office and told her that I was seriously thinking about college, and there was a stack of college brochures sitting atop her desk, and I stopped with the Miami brochure because it was pretty and there was a lot of red brick. And she said something that I'll never forget. She said, "Wil, you won't get admitted to Miami." And I said, "Why not?" And she said, "I don't think that your grades are good enough," and that was a big factor. I said about that last year in high school, actually last half of my 11th grade year, to prove her wrong. And it's so interesting, because I never applied anywhere else. My goal was to get into Miami University. That was the only school I thought about. I was even so confident in my abilities that I wrote head coach Darrell Hedrick a letter telling him that I knew I wouldn't be able to qualify for a scholarship because I didn't start on my high school basketball team, but I played varsity for two years in that I would be trying out as a walk-on when I reached campus, and he wrote me back. That was the first correspondence I had from Miami University, from Coach Darrell Hedrick.

President Greg Crawford
Oh, my goodness. And tell us a little about so you put a big bet on Miami. You only applied to one school.

Wil Haygood
I just applied to one school.

President Greg Crawford
Tell us about when the letter came in the mail. Back then, it was a letter, right? There was no no computers or digital.

Wil Haygood
Right.

President Greg Crawford
So did you wait for that letter? Or tell us a little bit about that day.

Wil Haygood
I started hearing, maybe in the early spring, of some of my classmates who had been accepted to their colleges and their universities, and I'm sitting around waiting and I'm rushing home from school every day and and I didn't see any mail one day turns into two, turns into three. And finally, I said to myself, Okay, Wil, something has gone wrong. So I wrote a letter to the dean of admissions before they had the chance to turn me down, and I said, "Dear Sir, my name is Wil Haygood. I live in Columbus, Ohio. No one in my family has ever gone to college. And I really want to come to Miami University. And I can guarantee you one thing, if I am accepted at Miami University. I will do things in life to make the university very proud that they accepted me," and I put that in the mail, and I continue to wait, and so my friends were telling me that if you were accepted, that you would get a big yellow envelope that had all of the information you needed about your dormitory and where you were going to live and how to get to campus and all that. And so one day I came home and my mother, she was a waitress, she was heading out the door, and I was coming in, and she said, Oh, you have a letter in there. And it wasn't the big yellow envelope that I was waiting for. It was a thin letter. So I said to myself, "I didn't get in. Oh, my Lord, I didn't get in." Because those who did get in had the big yellow envelope. So I remember we had a back stoop, and then there was a train track, and I went out on the back stoop, and I waited about 10 minutes before I started to open it, because I said a little prayer. I said, Lord, up in Heaven, I said, Sir, all I want to do is get on that train and leave the housing project, get an education and come back and help my mother." That's what I said. That was my prayer. And then I slowly opened the letter, and it was one of the best moments. Had to be the best moment of my life up until that time, because it said, "Dear Wil Haygood, we write to inform you that you have been accepted into the Miami University Class of 1976."

President Greg Crawford
Oh, my goodness.

Wil Haygood
And then the next day, my big letter arrived, the thick letter with my aid package in the dormitory, Morris Hall, where I was going to be staying at and everybody was, both in my family, happy, and I must say this, they were a little nervous, because I was the baby of the family, and they knew I would be going away, 130 miles away, and there was no car in the family. And my mother said, "Oh, oh, my goodness, if something happens to him down there, how will we be able to get to him." I mean, those were some of the thoughts. But, you know, my thought was, okay, I'm in I will prove myself once I hit campus. This is my time to shine and to work hard. And it was, it was just a very glorious day for me and my family.

President Greg Crawford
That's, that's fantastic story. So I've asked my leadership team to describe Wil Haygood in one word. And we got lots of words. We got world-renowned, courageous, resilient. We also got Hooper.

Wil Haygood
Yeah.

President Greg Crawford
And so take us back you played JV basketball here at Miami. Take us back to your most memorable game or most memorable moment on the court.

Wil Haygood
My coach was Jerry Pearson. I went out for the team in my freshman year and got cut. So he told me, he said, two things you have to do if you want to make this team next year, because as soon as I got cut, and I told him, I said, "I'll be back next year." And he said, he said, "I'd like you to put on a few more pounds, and your grades need to be improved, and you need to exercise a lot over the summer." So I did, and I went out for the team in my sophomore season, and he told me, by about the third practice, he said, "You're going to make the team this year." And I was so happy. I mean, to be a walk-on and to make a basketball team at a DI school is a really pretty wonderful achievement. And I wasn't getting much playing time, but then we had a game against Ball State at Millett in the second quarter. For some reason, Coach Pearson, he looked down the bench and said, "Haygood!" And I was ready. I was ready. He put me in the game. And there was a guy named Quentin Spence. This is such a wonderful story. Quentin Spence was a player from Mohawk High School in Columbus, Ohio, and he was a star on his team, and he was on the JV team too at Ball State now, and so he was on the court when I got in the game, and I knew him from playing during the summertime, and he he seen me, he walked over to me, and he said, "Haygood. Man, what are you doing out here?" And I looked at him, and I said, "The same thing you're doing. I'm hooping."

President Greg Crawford
Oh, there you go.

Wil Haygood
"I'm hooping, man." And so I had the ball in my court the first time down court in Millett, and I had Quentin Spence on me, and I said to myself, he's not as quick as me, so I'ma take him. And I took the ball between my legs, and I spun around, and I shot from the top of the key, and swish, I hit my first jump shot.

President Greg Crawford
Oh, my goodness.

Wil Haygood
At Millett, people hopped up in the stands, yay, and then I came down. Then later in the game, I scored my fourth point, and that was just a thrilling day for me to be a walk on and to score points at a school that nobody thought I would make it into.

President Greg Crawford
So tell us a little bit, world-renowned journalist, phenomenal, prolific writer all kind, 10 books now, just an amazing career. How did your Miami education prepare you for your career?

Wil Haygood
Well, I think it was books, books. I was introduced to books and the habit of reading, which meant, if you were reading, you were learning. And I had some wonderful professors, people who went out of their way to make sure that I was successful, Rick Moe Meyer, who was involved in Freedom Summer 64, I was in his philosophy class, and I didn't do well on the first test, and I did something that, I guess sort of sort of became a theme of my lifelong journey. I asked him if I could take the test over.

President Greg Crawford
Oh my goodness.

Wil Haygood
And he looked at me like I was nuts, but he said no, but he said I could do another paper for extra credit. And then there was a lady Marion Musgrave, first African American professor in the English Department here. She was from Cleveland. She was a hard teacher. She didn't take any, any guff, but she introduced me to James Baldwin.

President Greg Crawford
Oh my gosh.

Wil Haygood
She introduced me to James Baldwin. And I latched on to James Baldwin, his novels, his short stories, his writings about race, and she seemed to be very happy that I had found a muse. I had found somebody who I wanted to learn from, James Baldwin, and it was just the fact that I was able to take so many courses. I took history courses, Dr. Sherman Jackson, he introduced me to to the Civil War and to Frederick Douglass and to Abraham Lincoln and to Booker T. Washington. You know, and these were figures who were bigger than life. And I was suddenly studying their life, their career, how they helped make America what it was at the time, during the Civil War, in the 1920s, and Miami gave me a foundation, and I say that meaning that if you got a less than stellar grade, you weren't allowed to get too down, because you had another test in another course coming up later that week. So you had to keep your own mood up, your own spirit, you had to keep it up, or else you would definitely flunk out. And I didn't want to flunk out. I didn't want to go home. I didn't want to have to join the militar. You know, one of the moments, you know that my mother thought that I would have to quit school. She had lost her job, and so there, there wasn't enough money. This was in between my, I had finished my junior year, and I was looking forward to my senior year, but that summer, the school had sent a letter saying that here's how much that student aid you will get, and you have to bring $500 to campus, and so we were not going to be able to come up with that $500, and my mother wasn't as for some reason, wasn't as heartbroken as I was. I was just truly devastated. And I got on the phone, and I called somebody in financial aid office, and I said, "Hello, this is Wil Haygood. My mother has lost her job, and I'm sad to tell you that I won't be able to come back to school." And the gentleman who I was talking to in the Student Aid Office said, "Hold on a minute, Wil." And he put the phone down, and he came back and he said, "Hey, I'll see you on campus." And I said, "Excuse me/" He said, "You know, school starts in four weeks, and we'll expect to see you on campus." And I said, "No, no, no. What I'm trying to explain to you is I don't have the money." And he said, "We have the money."

President Greg Crawford
Oh, wow.

Wil Haygood
"We want Will Haygood back on campus. You're going into your senior year, and you haven't let us down, so we won't let you down."

President Greg Crawford
That's a great story. And you had mentioned James Baldwin. You started learning about him while you're at Miami, and did you ever get a chance to meet him in your career.

Wil Haygood
I did.

President Greg Crawford
Oh my goodness, that must have been a thrill.

Speaker 1
And it was such, you know, it's such, such a moment. I was a arts writer at The Boston Globe newspaper, and I came into the newsroom and and Cindy Smith said, "Hey, there's a visiting, visiting writer over at the University of Massachusetts, and we would like you to go write an article about that writer, because he has a new book out." And I said, "Oh, great. Who's the writer?" And she said, "James Baldwin." And my heart just started skipping a beat, like James Baldwin, the writer who I first read in Marion Musgrave's class at Miami University, who became my literary hero. Now I'm being sent to meet him, and she handed me his book. He had a book of essays that had just come out, called "The Price of the Ticket." So anyway, I had, like, about three or four days to read the book, and then I hopped on the train, went up to Amherst, and James Baldwin was staying with a couple, and they were on the porch waiting on me. I hopped out the taxi and walked up the steps, and the couple were leaving, and they said, "Wil, welcome. Jimmy is inside. He's waiting on you. Go on in and have a seat." And I did, and I'm sitting there, and it's very silent. And then all of a sudden I hear some footsteps. And then here he comes running down the steps. He was a small figure, and he talked in this kind of jazzy hipster way. He said, "Hey, baby, how you doing? How was your trip in?" And I said, "Oh, it was fine, Mr. Baldwin, and what an honor to meet you, sir." He said, "Well, you know, life is life, you know? So we can get started," you know, we had a little small talk, and then, and then we talked. I felt so comfortable around him that I said to myself, when this interview is over, I'm going to ask Mr. Baldwin something personal. And so the interview was over, and I said, "Sir, may I ask you something personal?" And he said, "Sure, baby, shoot. What is it?" And I said, "Do you, Mr. Baldwin, think that I could write books someday?" Now, of course, at this point, I hadn't written a single book, but I think I was starting to dream about books, and I asked him that question, and he stared at me very hard, and he took a drag on a cigarette, and he said, "How the hell should I know that? I don't know who you are. Baby books are hard. It takes discipline. What kind of question is that to ask me? I don't know whom you are, I don't know what kind of drive you have. Books are hard. Believe me when I say that, baby," and he could see my face dropped. I was so crushed, and it seemed like I had just made a fool of myself. And he scooted his chair a little closer to mine, and he said, "But I'll tell you what baby, whatever you do in life, you must go the way your blood beats. Whatever you do in life, you must go the way your blood beats." I tell my students here at Miami that all the time, and I tell them that those words hang on the wall of my writing study, because they, they were delivered to me from James Baldwin himself. And here, now, here I am now, 10 books later. I've gone the way my blood beats.

President Greg Crawford
That must have been a thrill to meet him. Oh my gosh.

Wil Haygood
It was, he was amazing. He, you know, there is an epigram at the beginning of this book, if I may read it.

President Greg Crawford
Yeah, let's do it.

Wil Haygood
It was a quote of his that I came across while I was researching my book, "The War Within a War: The Black Struggle in Vietnam and at Home." James Baldwin is mentioned in most of my books in some form or fashion, and this is what he said in the 60s. And I came across this quote, and I said, "Oh my goodness, I have to use that." And it says, "Long, long before the Americans decided to liberate the Southeast Asians, they decided to liberate me. My ancestors carried these scars to the grave, and so will I. A racist society can't but fight a racist war. This is the bitter truth. The assumptions acted on at home are also acted on abroad. And every American Negro knows this for he was the first Viet Cong victim. We were bombed first." James Baldwin.

President Greg Crawford
Powerful quote.

Wil Haygood
That quote spoke to me. It spoke to this book. It spoke to why I felt I needed every moment of the five years I spent researching and writing this book.

President Greg Crawford
You It's a great book, Will.

Wil Haygood
Thank you.

President Greg Crawford
We'll pivot to this now maybe, but the other night, we had the event at Hall Auditorium, and we had the national book launch of a war within a war. It was, it was an amazing night, and maybe you could tell us how you felt that night as you came out and and I'd also love to hear your perspective, you know, post the event when you heard your editor speak, and then you heard from Miss Dorothy Harris, the nurse in Vietnam, and you heard from Dr. Albert Nelson, who was a Black surgeon in Vietnam, and it must have been very meaningful to you as the author of the book who you wrote about these individuals and their courage and how inspiring they were. But how did you feel that night when you were able to sit down with them and share the story with the Miami community?

Wil Haygood
Yeah, it was so special. It was even magical because you have nurse Dorothy Harris, grew up in Cincinnati, and we, when we think of the Vietnam War, we don't think of women, because women were not allowed to fight, but they performed other duties, human relations and public relations, and they were cooks and nurses like Miss Harris was. And I felt so fortunate to find her and that she wanted to talk to me about her experiences in the war and one of the bravest people that I have ever met in my life. And then there was Dr. Nelson. He's a, he was a surgeon in Vietnam. He was born in segregated Georgia, and is after medical school, he looked on TV and saw the racial uprisings of the Watts Riots in Los Angeles, and he said to himself, he said there's going to be trouble in Vietnam, because he knew that the young Blacks, 18 and 19 years old after Watts, he figured that they were not they were not going to be be treated in in silence as second class citizens. He knew it, and he was right. And he tried to counsel so many of the young Blacks. He tried to tell them, look, you're in the army now. You have to obey orders. You don't want to do anything negative that would affect your future. So some of those soldiers listened to him, and some didn't. The odds were stacked against the Black soldier. There's no doubt about it, about 54% of the soldiers sent to the front lines early in the war were Black when Blacks only made up 10% of the population back in the USA. There were only 2% of Black officers in Vietnam. So number wise, the odds were stacked against you. That good, even fair-handed things would happen. The draft boards across this country in the early 60s, mid 60s were 98% white, so since more whites went to college and were able to get college deferments, that meant that the Black soldier was not going to be able to wheedle his way out of military service. You know, so working on the book for five years and then being able to bring the book to Miami University and having many of my students in the auditorium, Many faculty colleagues in the auditorium, to have you there moderating. I know you were kind of shy about this, but the book happens to be dedicated to you and to General Dennis Vai, two people who have meant a lot to my writing, writing life. To have that all come together was just special. I remember when I was a student here, there was, there were some guest speakers who came to campus at Hall Auditorium. And amongst those guest speakers were Julian Bond and Ralph Abernathy.

President Greg Crawford
Oh, my God.

Wil Haygood
Two of the giants of the Civil Rights Movement. I remember running around and saying to my friends in the dorm, "Hey, we have to go hear Julian Bond. Please hurry up, y'all." And all of us trekked across campus to see and and hear these people who were fighting for freedom. And so then all these years later, to be back with these stellar figures on the stage was really, really unforgettable.

President Greg Crawford
It was a very special evening for me, and I'm so grateful that you dedicated your book. I was in tears when you told me, because nobody's ever done anything like that before. So I'm so grateful reading this book, there's all kinds of inspiring stories, but there's one that caught some media attention too because of some uncovered films and interviews that they had, but Captain Riley Leroy Pitts, oh, you got to share that story, because I think that when people hear this story, they're gonna grab your book,

Wil Haygood
Yeah.

President Greg Crawford
and read the Whole thing because it is so inspiring and it's sad, then the most recent discovery of some of those film clips of his interviews for were really compelling with his family.

Wil Haygood
Riley Leroy Pitts was a young African American. He was out of Oklahoma, joined the military, and ended up in Vietnam working in public relations. He met Miss Dorothy Harris, the nurse that I have been talking about, and she just thought he was so special. He was very handsome, he was suave. He had a million dollar smile. He would come visit the nurses, and he would bring them Coca Colas that cost five cents a bottle. But he started talking to the nurses, saying, "You know what, I want to be a general. And because I want to be a general, I have to get out into the field, into battle." And nurse Harris said, "Riley, look, you have a great job in public relations. Please do not go out into the battlefield and fight. You don't need that. You're needed it here." And he said, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, I want to be a general, and to be a general, I need to be tested in battle." So he joins a group known as the Wolfhounds. It's a tough infantry group. He becomes one of their officers, and they go out into the bush and. And one night, they're sitting together around a little small campfire, and a hand grenade is lobbed right at his feet. So Riley Pitts is going to die, his men are going to die, and there's nothing nobody can do. Everybody's life flashes before them. Riley Pitts jumps up and throws his body onto the hand grenade, so he's going to die right then and there. There are screams all around. Only something amazing happens. The grenade malfunctions. It doesn't go off. Riley Pitts is alive. His men are alive, and everybody is sort of laughing and screaming and crying at the same time. As a little time passes, about an hour, his men start walking up to him, saying, Captain Pitts, when we get back to base, we're going to put you in for the Medal of Honor. He brushes them off, but they know he has done something, something otherworldly, something so heroic that they know as long as they live, that they will never forget that moment in watching their captain throw his body on that grenade so that they may live, so that they may get back home. Two days later, Riley Pitts is coming out of his tent in a round of shrapnel out of nowhere kills him, hits him in the head, and he dies on the spot. When they got back to base camp, they had to break the news to the chaplain and to nurse Pitts and to all the other nurses, but his men were true to their word. They put Riley Pitts in for the Medal of Honor, and he became the first Black officer, not soldier, but the first Black officer in the Vietnam War to be awarded the Medal of Honor. And I interviewed his widow, Miss Eula Pitts, because Miss Harris told me how to get in touch with her, the nurse. And so when the nurse, nurse Harris, she left the military, moved around, she had some other jobs, and one day she went to see her therapist, and she said to her therapist, she said, "Something's wrong with me. I'm very sad. Some days I can hardly get out of bed." And the nurse said, "Well, there must be, this must be connected to Vietnam. Is there something that happened to you in Vietnam, that maybe you've been hiding or shielding, and that you now need to face it." And nurse Harris said to me, "I finally was able to admit to my therapist that, yes, I miss Riley Pitts. He was a brother to me, and he had so much potential, and I've never been able to figure out why he died." And she said, "I don't think I'll be at peace until I go see Riley Pitts." And the therapist said "He's dead, though." And nurse Harris said, "I know I need to go visit his grave site." A week later, she got in her car, single Black woman in the 1970s and drove from Cincinnati to Oklahoma, and she found the grave site of Riley Pitts. And before she left Oklahoma, she asked somebody, she said, "Where does Mrs. Pitts live?" And nurse Harris went over to that house, climbed the very same steps that the chaplain and thne army officer had climbed years earlier when they were in route to knock on the door to tell Mrs. Pitts that her husband had died. And for the next five hours, Nurse Harris and Miss Eula Pitts talked and shared memories, and they became fast friends, and they talk off and on to this day. And then something, something happened after my book had actually, almost, actually it was finished, because I had to go back into the book and add this. Somebody with one of the national news stations was looking at some archives, and they came across some footage of an African American army officer in Vietnam talking about the issue of race in the military, and that officer happened to have been Riley Pitts. And the person who found it finally got word to Mrs. Pitts and her daughter and son that hey, we found some footage that we don't think anybody has ever seen. And they got the footage to her, and the son and daughter, Mark and Stacey, had not remembered anything about their father. They remember little echoes of his voice, but they had no memory of their father standing in front of them and speaking. They were very young children when he left, and so for them to see this footage was like a small miracle. And even though my book was finished, my editor, he gave me more time to add that story to the book. And when I was talking to Mrs. Pitts, I asked her, I said, "How does it feel now, Mrs. Pitts, after all these years that somebody has found lost footage of your husband who won the Medal of Honor?" and she said, "Wil, it feels wonderful, and we appreciate all of the medals in the recognition, but actually, we'd rather have Riley back." That was just so heartbreakingly beautiful how she put it.

President Greg Crawford
Oh, it's a heartwarming story, and also heartbreaking story, both at the same time.

Wil Haygood
It is. It is both. But I'm so happy that I'm able to give him his due in this book. As far as I know, he's never been written about in book form. And so I'm able to give the Pitts family a nice moment, which makes me feel really good. And of course, I'm able to give nurse Harris-- when nurse Harris left Oklahoma, she filled up her car with some bottles of Coca Cola.

President Greg Crawford
Oh, my goodness.

Wil Haygood
I know, I know. It is just an amazing story.

President Greg Crawford
Your book is full of these inspiring, amazing stories of heroes, and when you look at the cover, yeah, there's a picture a young marine, Skip Dunn's on that cover. And ever since the book was launched a few nights ago, everyone has an opinion about what that cover is trying to tell them, or how that cover speaks to them. Tell us how this came about, about Skip, and also tell us what you think about that.

Wil Haygood
Cover, yes, when I was in the seventh grade on North Fifth Street in Columbus, Ohio, I would come out the house every day, hop on my Schwinn bicycle or run off to school, and I would wave to a neighbor who lived right across the street from me, and that neighbor was a young high school sports star named Skip Dunn. He was just soulful, sweet, soulful guy, and it was just wonderful to know that he thought enough of me to wave to me every day, "Hey, Wil, how you doing?" And one day there was a stretch of about two weeks, and I didn't see skip done. And I asked my sister, Diane, I said, Diane, who went to school with him, I said, have you by any chance seen skip? And she said, Skip's going to a place called Vietnam. I was in the seventh grade. Had heard of Vietnam, but really, really had no way to understand what was going on, why the war was being fought. White people were being snatched out of the community, and so I never saw Skip again. My family moved to the east side a month after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1960 April 4, 1968 he was assassinated, and my mother waited till school was out in the seventh grade, and then we moved to the east side, and all of a sudden, the city erupted in fireball and flames because people were upset angered at Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination. There were national guardsmen on the streets on the east side of the city. I would be running from tanks just to try to get home from school. It was a very scary time, and like I said, I was only 13 years old. But then fast forward from that, and I become a writer, and I start working on a book about one of the big lost stories of the Vietnam War, and that lost story is, since it was our nation's first fully integrated war that lost story was, how did it affect the black soldiers there? As I write in the book, there are a lot of interracial stories that are great, and there are a lot that are not so great. There's a line that I write in the book, white couldn't survive without Black in Vietnam, and Black couldn't survive without white. It was forced brotherhood. And so I start writing this book about that very topic. I finished the book. I send it up to New York to my editor. He likes it, and we're right at that point where we can put the book to bed. You know, it's finished. It's been edited. You know, they're working on who's going to be on the cover of the book. They have their own ideas, and they're getting ready to share those ideas with me. And I wake up in the middle of the night, and I say to myself, and this is after the book is finished, I say to myself, whatever happened to Skip Dunn, who lived across the street from me? And so I, the next morning, when I got out of bed, I made a phone call to some people in my hometown inquiring about Skip Dunn, and they told me that he had passed away. And I was sad about that, so sad that I didn't have a chance to talk to him and put him in the book, even. And so this friend told me that that he could put me in touch with Skip Dunn's widow, Neva Dunn. So I phoned Miss Dunn. She had heard of me through The Butler movie, and it was very easy to talk to her. And I said, "I'm so sorry, Miss Dunn, I won't be able to put Skip in the book, because the book is finished, it's been handed in and everything." And she said, "Oh, Wil, I'm sorry too, because Skip would have loved just to have one line, just to have his name mentioned in the book." And I said, "Well, I'm so, so sorry." Then I said, "Mrs. Dunn, for sentimental reasons, can you, can you, by any chance, send me a photograph of Skip". And she said, "Sure." And so the next day, she emails me a photograph of Skip Dunn. And I look at it and I can't move. That is exactly the Skip Dunn that I knew from the seventh grade. It's a marine picture. He's in the Marines. He's had he has on his helmet, and his eyes are looking so soulful out. It's as if they're looking out at the country. It's as if they're asking, Why did you send me to Vietnam? What was that war all about. And I was so affected by that photograph that I sent it immediately to Peter, gathers, my editor in New York City. And Peter saw it and immediately took it to John Gall, who is the art designer on the book. And three days later, my editor calls me and says, "Wil we're going to do something. We're going to scrap the other ideas we had for the book jacket, because Skip Dunn's photograph is so soulful, is so righteous, that we're going to put Skip Dunn's photograph on the cover of your book." And I said, "Are you serious? Is there time to do that?" And they said, "Yes, there's time. And as a matter of fact, we want you to go back into the book and write a little more about how you met Skip and what he meant to you in the fact that Skip wasn't the only young Black man on your street and the next street over there were five others who you've told me about, Wil, and I now want you to write about that as the opener of your book." And it blew me away. It was so profound, and so when I got the version of the book jacket, I said, this is too special to just call Mrs. Dunn and tell her about it. I said, she deserves me to be sitting in front of her to tell her this story. So I made a plane reservation, and I had the photograph of the book jacket. I had the actual book jacket hidden in my shoulder bag. And so we sit down, we have small talk, and I say, "Mrs. Dunn, I have something to show you. I know you wanted Skip Dunn's name, or you had hoped that his name would at least be mentioned in the book." I said, "Well, I think I've done a little a little bit better than that." Then I pulled out the book jacket with her Skip Dunn, with her husband, the love of her life, on the cover, and she gasped. She was overwhelmed. She teared up her and I hugged each other. She immediately fell in love with the book jacket. She said all members of her family will fall in love with the book jacket, and that's why she wanted to come and join us here in Oxford for the national launch of the book. And it was just a surreal moment.

President Greg Crawford
I was, after the event, and you were signing all those books from our several 100 people that are attended, and everybody in that line that was holding the book had a comment about the cover. And it does speak to people in very different ways, but when you look at it, it also tells you a little bit maybe we should be better, maybe we should think better, right about the country, and maybe we should move forward. And it's an amazing cover.

Wil Haygood
It really is. He was only 18 years old. Even the helmet looks too big for his head. You know in his eyes, you know his smooth skin. In the lower third of the book jacket, there is a picture of a police officer grabbing a young African American in Birmingham, Alabama, during an effort to register voters to vote in the South. And that's, that's that's full on the reason why the book is called "The War Within a War."

President Greg Crawford
it's a really meaningful book, Wil, and I think that you know, when we talk to our students, we talk to our alumni groups and so forth, your career has really been about writing and illuminating the lives of Black Americans and in the times in which they lived, and the race and the history and the nature of what was going on a lot in the Civil Rights era, of course. That's how you, all your books kind of flow that way. How did you get to that? You know, that's your specialty. That's what you do so well, to interweave and interlace history and context into these stories of people.

Wil Haygood
It's you know, Abraham Lincoln said "A house divided cannot stand." And he was talking about slavery. He was talking about the South's insistence that slavery be kept in place. And Lincoln, he pleaded with the South, you're going to start a civil war. And of course, when Fort Sumter was fired upon, that was the beginning of the Civil War and the largest, most profound, epic moments in this nation's history have been focused around race. This nation was founded with the engine of slavery. Slaves helped build this nation. This nation was built on the backs of Black folk forced labor. And I know that there have been certain politicians who have said, "Oh, well, there were some good things about slavery." No, there were not. If your mother is snatched from you and raped in the woods, there's nothing good about that. I mean, there's just no way to frame that at all. And so you look at 1862, 1863 and then you look 100 years later, that's how long it took us to get the first most meaningful Civil Rights Bill 1964 in this modern era. And I think Lincoln was trying to say that if you don't get your house in order, nothing else matters, flying to the moon and making all these fancy cars and, you know, and all the billions of dollars that people can have. If you don't get humanity right, the respect for others, if you don't get that right, if you keep trying to put one race over another, then your your nation will be stifled. That's what Lincoln was trying to say. A house divided cannot stand. That's why Skip Dunn and others went off to war. They had it in their mind, even though they they were often mistreated. They had a great love of country as we all do. We love our country. We want our country to do right by fellow citizens. We want our country to stand tall in the eyes of the world. We don't want our nation banning books. We don't want our nation murdering people just because of the color of their skin or their sexual orientation. Skip Dunn represents the best of us, and that is one of the reasons why I was so proud to do this book. There are so many stories of heroism. There's a story of an Air Force pilot, Fred Cherry, and he was shot down and he was a POW and the North Vietnamese put him with another, another officer, Halliburton and and the North Vietnamese said, well, one is a Black man and the other is a white man, so they'll kill each other. They saved each other's life over a course of four years, over the course of being beaten. When one was beaten, the other would nursing back to health. The Black man would nurse the white man back to health, and the white man would nurse the Black man back to health. They grew to love each other. It's one of the beautiful stories in this book. And yes, while it is war and war is hell, there are also moments when you can just feel the love that a soldier has for his fellow soldier. We have to remind ourselves that the Vietnam War was the first war where there were photographs in Life Magazine and Time Magazine showing that bond between Black and white soldiers. We just didn't see that in World War I in World War II, but suddenly we had magazines, Ebony, Jet magazine, Newsweek magazine, Life magazine, Look magazine, and you'd see Black soldiers, and you knew that they had made themselves a significant part of this war. There was nothing in a Black community to make mothers and fathers more prouder than to see their sons coming back from military service in their uniform, because that said to them, I am contributing via my son, via my daughter, to the democracy of this country. I am contributing my son and my daughter has joined forces with the best of the best, and they are fighting so that our nation can survive.

President Greg Crawford
Oh, my goodness. You've been teaching for us for some time here at Miami, the Bodeway Scholar in Residence, and we're grateful for all that you do for our students, but tell us why you do it. You write a lot. You have a job, and you come back to your alma mater and you share your life experiences and your career experiences with our students/

Wil Haygood
Yeah, some of it is, well, I guess all of it is due to this, my life certainly wouldn't have turned out the way it has, if I had not have come to Miami University. So that's first and foremost. The school has just meant so much to me. And I think of this: James Baldwin taught at Bowling Green State University, and he must have gotten something from that, because he kept going back, and it's just a treat to be able to share stories with the students about what it was like watching Nelson Mandela walk out of prison, what it was like to cover the Los Angeles riots after the savage beating of the Black motorist Rodney King, what it was like to be on the ground for 33 straight days during Hurricane Katrina, what it was like to be snuck into a prison to interview singer James Brown, what it was like to be taken hostage in a war zone, which happened to me when I was in Somalia, what it was like to cover the Hindu-Muslim uprisings in India. All of these things happen to me, but it's the height of selfishness if I don't want to share those things and to, by virtue of sharing them, I can explain to students how I was able to get those stories, how I found those stories, what reading has done for me when I'm trying to fill my head with knowledge about going into a nation that I had never visited, and to see the students eyes light up, and to see them furiously taking notes, it makes me know that that I am giving something back, and I don't know if I'll ever be able to totally give back to what Miami has given me, but I do try hard.

President Greg Crawford
You gave us a collection, the Wil Haygood collection and the archives, what we're having here now at Miami, are just extraordinary, and they'll be with us forever, in perpetuity, for many, many years to come. What do you hope our students today and those in the future will get out of those archives when they start to learn about Wil Haygood.

Wil Haygood
Writers have, in my book, writers have a moral duty to explain the nation if you write nonfiction, to explain what's going on and to find stories that haven't been written. Most of my books, in my biography of Sammy Davis, Jr, when it came out, it was the first, first major biography of his life. There had been books about Thurgood Marshall, but there had never been a book about his contentious hearings to get onto the Supreme Court. I wrote a book called "Tigerland" about all-Black East High School that won the state championship, two state championships in Columbus, Ohio, 1968-1969 the same school year this all-Black, segregated, low income school won two state championships. The stories that I find are stories that haven't been found yet, and that makes me extremely, extremely proud. And it's a craft, and I've given many, many, many years to this craft, and I want people to look at my work and know that it hasn't been easy finding these stories, being shot at in war zones, being taken hostage. It hasn't been easy, but it's been the type of journey that I know I'm fortunate to have and to still be working in the realm that I'm working in writing books, writing newspaper stories, writing essays, in teaching it all is so very fulfilling to me. And when people read one of my books, they expect a certain level, for lack of a better word, they expect a certain level of artistry, of art. And I like to think that I pour all of my narrative muscle into my books.

President Greg Crawford
We are so grateful for all that you do for your alma mater and this great university here, and we're so grateful for what you do for our students. I know they love having you. I ran into one of your students today, and so Wil, just thank you for everything that you do for us and spending this time with us today, the work that you've done has just been incredible. Thank you for your continued contributions to Miami and all of our students.

Wil Haygood
And I thank you for for truly caring about the work that I do. It means a lot. Means more than you'll ever know. And so it makes me super proud that this book, "The War Within a War," with Skip Dunn, on the cover, speaks to you, has been dedicated to you. And thank you so much.

President Greg Crawford
Thank you, Wil.

President Greg Crawford
thanks for listening to this episode of in such a place from Miami University. Stay tuned for more great episodes with more great guests wherever podcasts are found.