Tigerland

July 30, 2018
High school teams bear the symbolic weight of the civil rights movement in this intense sports saga. Journalist Haygood (The Butler) follows the Tigers of East High, an all-black school in Columbus, Ohio, through state championship basketball and baseball seasons in the 1968–1969 school year. The Tigers were already a basketball powerhouse—they had won the previous year’s championship—and most games were predictable blowouts of weaker teams; the baseball players, meanwhile, had an undistinguished regular season, but got lucky in the postseason. Haygood emphasizes racial context as the teams weather the de facto segregation of Columbus schools, encounter racial antagonism at road games in white areas, and start wearing afros; he sets the narrative against national racial tensions, Tiger families’ experiences of poverty and the jim crow South, and accounts of historic civil rights episodes like the Emmett Till lynching and Jackie Robinson’s career. Haygood strains for socio-historical import (“nd so it would be—eleven months after the murder of Martin Luther King Jr.—the black kids from East High would be going to the state championship game”) and overhypes a season that doesn’t feel very significant. Nevertheless, Haygood is a passionate storyteller as he expertly captures this period of civil unrest in an American city. Photos.

August 1, 2018
During the 1968-1969 school year, an all-black high school soared to win Ohio's basketball and baseball championships.Journalist Haygood (Media, Journalism, and Film/Miami Univ.; The Haygoods of Columbus: A Love Story, 2016, etc.), a Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow, tells a story of perseverance, courage, and breathtaking talent as he recounts, in vibrant detail, the achievements of the Tigers, a basketball and baseball team at Columbus, Ohio's inner-city East High School. Drawing on interviews with the athletes and their families, coaches, and teachers as well as published and archival sources, the author creates moving portraits of the teenagers and their undaunted coaches and supporters. "Black boys in a white world," the students lived on the blighted side of town and had always attended underfunded schools; many had mothers who cleaned houses for wealthy whites. But they were uniquely, impressively talented athletes, and sports was a means of proving their worth. The Tigers could not have achieved their success without the help of two dedicated coaches: Bob Hart and Paul Pennell, both white, "big-hearted men who had a social conscience"; nor without the tireless and defiant efforts of Jack Gibbs, Columbus' first black high school principal, an astute networker who roused support from parents, business owners, and community leaders. Because the East Side had the city's highest crime rate, Gibbs made sure the students were kept too busy with school activities to get into mischief. East High "became part progressive laboratory, part military school, a place that had high expectations for student achievement." Haygood dramatically renders the heady excitement of each game, the tense moments of a close contest, and the exuberant--tear-jerking--wins. The inspiring story of East High's championship becomes even more astonishing in the context of endemic racism, which the author closely examines, and "the turmoil of a nation at war and in the midst of unrest," roiled by the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy.An engrossing tale of one shining moment in dark times.

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Starred review from August 1, 2018
The city is Columbus, Ohio; its Tigers are the phenomenally talented and determined basketball and baseball teams at East High School, and the magic happens during the traumatic and tragic events of 1968 and 1969. In spite of official desegregation, East High's students were all African American, and its resources severely limited; yet it was rich in talent and spirit, from exceptionally gifted athletes to the heroically devoted and innovative principal, Jack Gibbs, also African American. Columbus is the hometown of journalist, Guggenheim fellow, and acclaimed author Haygood (Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court Nomination That Changed America, 2015), and he is in the zone as he portrays in striking and thoughtful detail team members, many the sons of domestic workers, and their coaches and supporters in this dynamic, multidimensional, and heart-revving inquiry into how two ragtag teams managed to win two back-to-back state championships in basketball and baseball, displaying passionate teamwork that embodied the pride and protest of the black-power movement. As in all his avidly read books, Haygood sets the stories of fascinating individuals within the context of freshly reclaimed and vigorously recounted African American history as he masterfully brings a high school and its community to life. This laugh-and-cry tale of rollicking and wrenching drama set to the beat of thumping basketballs and the crack of baseball bats, fast breaks and cheerleaders' chants, is electric with tension and conviction, and incandescent with unity and hope.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

October 1, 2018

The year 1968 was a turning point in American social history with the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the war continuing to rage in Vietnam, and Nixon's southern strategy stoking racial tensions. All of these play a role in Haygood's (The Butler) unique look at an Ohio high school's grand achievement of state championships in both basketball and baseball on the 50th anniversary. Columbus, OH, where East High School stood, was a severely segregated city in 1968. Haygood weaves the political and cultural events of the Sixties as he describes the rise of a white basketball coach, Bob Hart, and his all-African American team straight to a state championship. The narrative also explores the achievements on the baseball diamond in the spring of 1969. Haygood's goal to connect the local stories of Columbus to the wider national conversation on racial integration is successful and illuminating. VERDICT Readers of sports and American history as well as fans of Alejandro Danois's The Boys of Dunbar will find plenty of in-game action as well as historical perspective to cherish.--Keith Klang, Port Washington P.L., NY

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2018

A Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of the best-selling The Butler, Haygood chronicles two teams from a poor, black, segregated high school in Ohio that overcame late Sixties racial turbulence and clobbered the odds to win the Ohio state baseball and basketball championships in the same year.

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.