Long before Wil Haygood became an award-winning journalist, biographer and author, the Vietnam War arrived on his street in Columbus, Ohio.
As a fifth grader with a paper route, Haygood knew six young Black men who lived in his neighborhood. “Then one day, they’re all gone, poof, drafted into the Vietnam War,” Haygood said. “It really sort of decimated my street and the next street over. Everybody in the community missed them.”
Their absence stayed with him. Visiting with UDC students in September, Haygood shared these stories which served as the foundation for his latest book, The War Within a War: The Black Struggle in Vietnam and at Home. Haygood shared historical facts, research, personal stories, and experiences in a lecture to UDC students. Years later, after becoming a journalist and author, Haygood began looking at the enormous body of writing about Vietnam and noticed something missing: the experiences of Black soldiers.
“A big gap in Vietnam, in the Vietnam literature, was the fate of the Black soldier,” Haygood said. “Because they were fighting two wars.”
For Haygood, those two wars cannot be separated. Black servicemen were fighting in Vietnam while the civil rights movement was transforming the country they would eventually return to.
“They were fighting a war for racial justice when they came home,” he said, “and they were fighting for racial equality during the war, and so you have two wars simultaneously going on.”
A message waiting in the jungle
One of the most striking discoveries in Haygood’s research came during an interview with Dr. Elbert Nelson.
Nelson told Haygood about a piece of North Vietnamese propaganda he had encountered in Vietnam. It had been placed in the jungle specifically for Black American troops to see.
The message, Haygood recalled, essentially asked Black soldiers why they were fighting in Vietnam when their own government was failing to treat them equally at home.
Haygood’s lecture was eye-opening for many UDC students hearing how the Vietnam War impacted Black soldiers. UDC student E. Richardson’s takeaway from the lecture: “you cannot erase black history; it has cemented its place in American history.”
Haygood’s work has centered on individuals whose lives intersect with larger moments in American history, civil rights and culture through powerful storytelling. His work as a journalist, author, and biographer, has received national praise and recognition. Earlier this year, Haygood was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
In addition to The War Within a War, Haygood is also known other published works including Colorization: One Hundred Years of Black Films in a White World, and Tigerland: 1968-1969: A City Divided, A Nation Torn Apart, and A Magical Season of Healing, among others.
He’s also written about Sammy Davis Jr. and Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.
When it comes to writing about people who experienced racism, violence and war, Haygood said he does not want trauma to become their entire identity.
“I think that it’s up to me, as a journalist, as a writer and as a biographer, to try to get the totality of people,” he said.
