The Herald-Dispatch
HUNTINGTON, W.Va. — Award-winning and internationally known biographer and journalist Wil Haygood will deliver the Amicus Curiae Lecture “Thurgood Marshall’s Battle for Justice” at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 11, in the Brad D. Smith Foundation Hall on Marshall University’s Huntington campus.
(Submitted photo)
This year marks the 50th anniversary of Thurgood Marshall’s 1967 confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court. Haygood’s book “Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court Nomination that Changed America” chronicles the furious battle to get Thurgood Marshall confirmed to the Supreme Court, where he became the first African-American to serve on that court.
Among other prizes, “Showdown” won the Scribes Book Award, given annually to the best book written on American law, and was a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize.
Haygood will discuss “the undeniable reality of why Marshall and his vision of jurisprudence – from voting rights to women’s rights to fair application of law enforcement – is now more important than ever in our nation.”
During nearly 30 years as a journalist, Haygood was national and foreign correspondent for The Boston Globe, where he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and a national writer for The Washington Post. His story “A Butler Well Served by this Election” was the basis for the 2013 award-winning motion picture “The Butler,” and his book “The Butler: A Witness to History,” has been translated into more than a dozen languages.
The Amicus Curiae Lecture Series is sponsored by the Simon Perry Center for Constitutional Democracy at Marshall University and supported by a grant from the West Virginia Humanities Council.
The third lecture of fall 2017 will be Thursday, Nov. 9, when Vanderbilt University professor Dr. Marc Hetherington will deliver a lecture focused on political polarization in the United States, “Fixed World View or Fluid? Why Republicans and Democrats Hate Each Other.”
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