Writer Wil Haygood Finds Hope in a New Generation
What the forgotten athletes of the acclaimed author’s “Tigerland” have taught young people
Wil Haygood
Kids often gravitate toward heroes. It does not seem to matter if those heroes are mythical or mortal. They fly and soar; they go off on quests and return victorious, having defeated unimaginable odds. Growing up in Columbus, I watched Batman and Superman on television, but other heroes of mine had their feet on the ground. They were basketball and football players.
If you were a Black kid living in Columbus in the 1960s, and if you were wild about basketball, as I happened to be, you found your heroes among the East High Tigers, the all-Black school on the east side of town. I lived on the north side and had never laid eyes on East High, but I knew when East’s basketball team came to play a game at the Fairgrounds Coliseum within walking distance of my home I just had to be there. The Tigers were Black pride and Blac