Before Barack Obama, Colin Powell, and Martin Luther King, Jr., there was Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. -- the most celebrated and controversial black politician of his generation. An astute businessman known as "Mr. Civil Rights," he represented Harlem for twenty-four years in the House of Representatives. He was a man of the cloth and a civil rights leader, but Powell's reputation for flamboyance, arrogance, and womanizing made him his own worst enemy. In this towering and definitive biography, acclaimed journalist Wil Haygood paints a vivid portrait of one of black America's most memorable dignitaries.

King of the Cats: The Life and Times of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.

Haygood, WIl

History

Harper Paperbacks

Over the course of his forty-year career, Thurgood Marshall brought down the separate-but-equal doctrine, integrated schools, and not only fought for human rights and human dignity but also made them impossible to deny in the courts and in the streets. In this galvanizing biography, award-winning author Wil Haygood uses the framework of the dramatic, contentious five-day Senate hearing to confirm Marshall as the first African-American Supreme Court justice, to weave a provocative and moving look at Marshall’s life as well as at the politicians, lawyers, activists, and others who shaped—or desperately tried to stop—the civil rights movement. An authoritative account of one of the most transformative justices of the twentieth century, Showdown makes clear that it is impossible to overestimate Thurgood Marshall’s lasting influence on the racial politics of our nation.

Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court Nomination That Changed America

Biographies & Memoirs

Community & Culture

Vintage

Thurgood Marshall brought down the separate-but-equal doctrine, integrated schools, and not only fought for human rights and human dignity but also made them impossible to deny in the courts and in the streets. In this stunning new biography, award-winning author Wil Haygood surpasses the emotional impact of his inspiring best seller The Butler to detail the life and career of one of the most transformative legal minds of the past one hundred years. Using the framework of the dramatic, contentious five-day Senate hearing to confirm Marshall as the first African-American Supreme Court justice, Haygood creates a provocative and moving look at Marshall’s life as well as the politicians, lawyers, activists, and others who shaped—or desperately tried to stop—the civil rights movement of the twentieth century: President Lyndon Johnson; Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr., whose scandals almost cost Marshall the Supreme Court judgeship; Harry and Harriette Moore, the Florida NAACP workers killed by the KKK; Justice J. Waties Waring, a racist lawyer from South Carolina, who, after being appointed to the federal court, became such a champion of civil rights that he was forced to flee the South; John, Robert, and Ted Kennedy; Senator Strom Thurmond, the renowned racist from South Carolina, who had a secret black mistress and child; North Carolina senator Sam Ervin, who tried to use his Constitutional expertise to block Marshall’s appointment; Senator James Eastland of Mississippi, the head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who stated that segregation was “the law of nature, the law of God”; Arkansas senator John McClellan, who, as a boy, after Teddy Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington to dinner at the White House, wrote a prize-winning school essay proclaiming that Roosevelt had destroyed the integrity of the presidency; and so many others. This galvanizing book makes clear that it is impossible to overestimate Thurgood Marshall’s lasting influence on the racial politics of our nation.

KNOPF

He was, for decades, one of the most recognizable figures in the cultural landscape, his image epitomizing a golden age of American show business. His career spanned a lifetime, but for years he has remained hidden behind the persona he so vigorously generated, and so fiercely protected. Now, in this surprising, illuminating, and compulsively readable biography, we are taken beyond the icon, into the extraordinary, singular life of Sammy Davis, Jr. In scrupulous detail and with stunning powers of evocation, Wil Haygood takes us back to the era of vaudeville, where it all began for four-year-old Sammy who ran out onstage one night and stole the show. From then on it was a motherless childhood on the road, singing and dancing his way across a segregated America with his father and the formidable showman Will Mastin, struggling together to survive the Depression and the demise of vaudeville itself. With an ambition honed by poverty and an obsessive need for applause, Sammy drove his way into the nightclub circuit of the 1940s and 1950s, when, his father and Mastin aging and out of style, he slowly began to make a name for himself, hustling his way to top billing and eventually to recording contracts. From there, he was to stake his claim on Broadway, in Hollywood, and, of course, in Las Vegas. Haygood brings Sammy’s showbiz life into full relief against the backdrop of an America in the throes of racial change. Sammy grew up trapped between the worlds of blacks and whites, with so much invested in both. He made his living entertaining white people but was often denied service in the very venues he played. Drafted into a newly integrated U.S. Army in the 1940s, he saw up close the fierce tensions that seethed below the surface. Dragged into the civil rights movement, he witnessed a hatred that often erupted into violence. In his broad and varied friendships and alliances (with Frank Sinatra; Martin Luther King, Jr.; Richard Nixon; Sidney Poitier; Marilyn Monroe, to name just a few), not to mention his romances (his relationship with Kim Novak and his marriage to the blond beauty May Britt drew death threats), he forged uncharted paths across racial lines. Admired and reviled by both blacks and whites, he was tormented all his life by raging insecurities, and never quite came to terms with his own skin. Ultimately, his only true sense of his identity was as a performer. Based on painstaking research and more than 250 interviews, Wil Haygood brings us a sweeping and vivid cultural history of the twentieth century, chronicling black entertainment from its beginnings and the birth of popular culture as we know it. In Black and White transcends simple biography to become an important record, both celebratory and elegiacal, of a vanished America and its greatest entertainer.

In Black and White: The Life of Sammy Davis, Jr.

Arts & Literature

A biography of the important African-American figure discusses Powell's childhood in Harlem, his years as a minister, his tenure in politics, his personal life, his crusades against poverty and racism, and his eventual downfall. 40,000 first printing.

Leaders & Notable People

Houghton, mifflin, harcourt

The Haygoods of Columbus: A Love Story (Trillium Books)

The author, a newspaper reporter for the Boston Globe, describes his childhood in Columbus, Ohio, the lives of his family members, and the changes that affected their neighborhood

The Haygoods of Columbus: A Love Story

Regional U.S.

Houghton/Mifflin

Discusses Powell's childhood in Harlem, his tenure in politics, and his crusades against poverty and racism

King Of The Cats: The Life & Times of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.

Against the backdrop of one of the most tumultuous periods in recent American history, as riots and demonstrations spread across the nation, the Tigers of poor, segregated East High School in Columbus, Ohio did something no team from one school had ever done before: they won the state basketball and baseball championships in the same year. They defeated bigger, richer, whiter teams across the state and along the way brought blacks and whites together, eased a painful racial divide throughout the state, and overcame extraordinary obstacles on their road to success. In Tigerland, Wil Haygood gives us a spirited and stirring account of this improbable triumph and takes us deep into the personal lives of these local heroes. At the same time, he places the Tigers’ story in the context of the racially charged sixties, bringing in such national figures as Jackie Robinson, Martin Luther King Jr., and Richard Nixon, all of whom had a connection to the teams and a direct effect on their mythical season.

Tigerland: 1968-1969: A City Divided, a Nation Torn Apart, and a Magical Season of Healing

Americas

Product Description 
“At once a film book, a history book, and a civil rights book.… Without a doubt, not only the very best film book [but] also one of the best books of the year in any genre. An absolutely essential read.” —Shondaland\nThis unprecedented history of Black cinema examines 100 years of Black movies—from 
Gone with the Wind to Blaxploitation films to 
Black Panther—using the struggles and triumphs of the artists, and the films themselves, as a prism to explore Black culture, civil rights, and racism in America. From the acclaimed author of 
The Butler and 
Showdown.\nBeginning in 1915 with D. W. Griffith's 
The Birth of a Nation—which glorified the Ku Klux Klan and became Hollywood's first blockbuster—Wil Haygood gives us an incisive, fascinating, little-known history, spanning more than a century, of Black artists in the film business, on-screen and behind the scenes.\nHe makes clear the effects of changing social realities and events on the business of making movies and on what was represented on the screen: from Jim Crow and segregation to white flight and interracial relationships, from the assassination of Malcolm X, to the O. J. Simpson trial, to the Black Lives Matter movement. He considers the films themselves—including 
Imitation of Life, Gone with the Wind, Porgy and Bess, the Blaxploitation films of the seventies, 
Do The Right Thing, 12 Years a Slave, and 
Black Panther. And he brings to new light the careers and significance of a wide range of historic and contemporary figures: Hattie McDaniel, Sidney Poitier, Berry Gordy, Alex Haley, Spike Lee, Billy Dee Willliams, Richard Pryor, Halle Berry, Ava DuVernay, and Jordan Peele, among many others.\nAn important, timely book, 
Colorization gives us both an unprecedented history of Black cinema and a groundbreaking perspective on racism in modern America. 
 Review 
“This is an invaluable national memoir, seen through the ardent research — and lived experience — of the award-winning Black journalist and movie lover Wil Haygood…The white world he has in mind is America, to be exact. And Haygood anchors the opening of his survey in an extended contrast between the life and work of the commandingly influential director D.W. Griffith (whose disquieting 1915 masterpiece, “The Birth of a Nation,” with its vividly racist underpinnings, was screened in Woodrow Wilson’s White House for an appreciative audience) and that of the contemporaneous Black director Oscar Micheaux...the author’s unflagging energy also serves as an effective reproach to any who still don’t feel the frustration of how difficult it has been for so long for Black Americans to see themselves on screen and feel seen in the great American movie industry…At times “Colorization” has the feel of an almanac, or maybe it’s an encyclopedia, or a time capsule timed right up to the minute. The archivist doesn’t want to miss a detail or a moment. This is a memoir that demands update and expansion in the years to come.” --Lisa Schwarzbaum; 
NY Times Book Review\n"Haygood...has become a master craftsman, one whose joinery is seamless...This is sweeping history, but in Haygood’s hands it feels crisp, urgent and pared down. He doesn’t try to be encyclopedic. He takes a story he needs, tells it well, and ties it to the next one. He carries you along on dispassionate analysis and often novelistic detail….this is important, spirited popular history. Like a good movie, it pops from the start." -- Dwight Garner, 
The New York Times 
“This enthralling and impeccably researched study starts with the silent era and ends with the death of George Floyd. “In the life of Black Americans,” Haygood writes, “photographs and moving images would come to be quite significant, illustrating both hardship and brutality.” In addition to documenting the key texts, Haygood also delves into the stories of individuals like Dorothy Dandridge and Melvin Van Peebles.” --Christopher Schobert, 
The Film Stage\n“At once a film book, a h

Colorization: One Hundred Years of Black Films in a White World

Literature & Fiction

Dramas & Plays

The untold story of Sammy Davis, Jr.: This incisive biography and sweeping cultural history conjures "the many worlds [Davis, Jr.] traversed, and shows how the issue of race, in his own mind and in the minds of his fans and detractors, shaped his career and life" (The New York Times).\nFor decades one of America’s most recognizable stars, the real Sammy Davis, Jr. has long remained hidden behind the persona the performer so vigorously generated—and so fiercely protected.\nHere Wil Haygood brings Davis’s life into full relief against the backdrop of an America in the throes of racial change. He made his living entertaining white people but was often denied service in the very venues he played, and in his broad and varied friendships—not to mention his romances—Davis crossed racial lines in ways few others had.\nIn Black and White vividly draws on painstaking research and more than two hundred and fifty interviews to trace Davis, Jr.’s journey from the vaudeville stage to Broadway, Hollywood, and, of course, Las Vegas. It is an important record of a vanished America—and of one of its greatest entertainers.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Haygood, WIl. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Haygood, WIl

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Haygood, WIl. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

King of the Cats: The Life and Times of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.

Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court Nomination That Changed America

Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court Nomination That Changed America

In Black and White: The Life of Sammy Davis, Jr.

King of the Cats: The Life and Times of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.

The Haygoods of Columbus: A Love Story

King Of The Cats: The Life & Times of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.

Tigerland: 1968-1969: A City Divided, a Nation Torn Apart, and a Magical Season of Healing

Colorization: One Hundred Years of Black Films in a White World

In Black and White: The Life of Sammy Davis, Jr.