Roger Brown Residency : University of Dayton, Ohio

About the Residency

The Roger Brown Residency in Social Justice, Writing and Sport at the University of Dayton is an opportunity for a distinguished writer to engage the University and wider Dayton community in a conversation about the intersections of athletics, literature, and justice. Writers and athletes have long named wrongs and sought justice, and sports often have provided a lens into struggles to create a more just social order. By inviting a writer whose work reflects the University of Dayton’s commitments to excellence in athletics, academics, and social justice, the University and wider community will celebrate, reflect upon, and synthesize the roles of writing and athletics in the pursuit of social justice in a nationally distinctive writer’s residency.

Roger Brown’s life is emblematic of the struggles that many people face in pursuit of the good and a good life. Even for those among the most gifted, that pursuit is often made all too difficult by seemingly intractable social circumstances and forces. Roger Brown represents the grit, persistence, and commitment to excellence over the long haul that can bring about a more just social order for today and tomorrow.

The Roger Brown Residency celebrates the work of writers and the work of athletes in these struggles and brings the community together in dialogue about barriers to social justice as well as our hopes and aspirations for a more just society.

Not only was Roger Brown a champion on the hardwood, he was a winner as a civil servant, businessman and philanthropist.

As the first player signed by the Indiana Pacers of the new American Basketball Association, Brown helped lead the Pacers to three ABA championships. When he closed out his career in 1975, the four-time ABA all-star was 10th on the ABA all-time scoring list and the league's record-holder for points in a playoff game, shooting percentage in a game, consecutive field goals made, career playoff games played, career playoff points, career playoff wins, career finals games played and career finals wins. Visit his Indiana Pacers career gallery here.

Born in 1942 in Brooklyn, N.Y, Brown started his rise to basketball prominence as a prep hoops legend at George W. Wingate High School, breaking the New York City Public Schools Athletic League career scoring mark.

He went to the University of Dayton where he starred on the freshman squad that qualified for the national American Athletic Union tournament. In 1961, Brown was caught up in a national gambling scandal. He was dismissed from UD and barred from playing basketball in the NCAA and the National Basketball Association for associating with gamblers, although he was never charged with a crime and there was no indication he was involved in fixing games.

Members of the West Dayton community rallied around Brown, helping him through the dark days after he was dismissed from UD. He was taken in by Arlena and Azariah Smith, whom he met when the UD freshman squad played against local AAU teams, including the Inland Manufacturing team for which Azariah Smith was an assistant coach.

The Smiths welcomed Brown into their home, and Azariah helped him land a job at Inland and a spot on the plant's AAU team in the industrial league, and later on the Jones Brothers' Funeral Home team. During the next few years, the Smiths continued to support and nurture Brown through a number of disappointments, including being prevented from playing on the 1964 U.S. Olympic team. At that time, the many AAU teams were on a par with college basketball teams and the Olympics team drew from both.

The Dayton AAU experience was crucially important for Brown, connecting him with first-rate amateur players to keep his skills sharp, introducing him to life-long friends, and helping him to become part of the Dayton community. He stayed in Dayton until 1967 when Cincinnati Royals legend Oscar Robertson suggested that the Pacers should take a look at Brown when they were forming their first team. He was the first player signed as a Pacer and went on to carve out a brilliant career.

Although the NBA ban against Brown was reversed as a result of a 1969 court settlement, his loyalties remained with the ABA's Pacers and Indianapolis.

The PBS documentary "Undefeated: The Roger Brown Story" immortalized his career in 2013, the same year the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame enshrined him with a class that included Gary Payton, Bernard King and Dawn Staley.

The documentary included high acclaim by fellow Naismith hall of famers Robertson, George Gervin, Julius Erving, Reggie Miller and NBA career scoring leader Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Miller, who with Brown is among five players to have their jerseys retired by the Pacers, called Brown "the best athlete ever to don a Pacers uniform."

After his playing days, Brown remained in Indianapolis where he was an assistant coroner, a member of the Indianapolis city council, a coach with the Pacers and a mentor to Indiana Pacers players.

"That said something about him as a person that he cared about the city, as well as the sports team," William Hudnut, Indianapolis mayor from 1976 to 1991, said in the documentary.

Brown also gave back to the city of Dayton, covering expenses for a foster care program for teens, Youth Engaged for Success.

"Roger also would come in when we had our youth groups and speak to the kids, and he always said to them, 'Your beginning doesn't have to be your end.' No matter what he went through, it doesn't have to define the rest of your life," Youth Engaged for Success Co-Founder Barbara Boatright said in the documentary.

Brown died of liver cancer in 1997 at the age of 54.

Inaugural Residency: Wil Haygood

Wil Haygood is a celebrated journalist and author, known for his 2008 Washington Post article that was the basis for the film The Butler, directed by Lee Daniels, starring Forest Whitaker and Oprah Winfrey. He has received a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, and the 2017 Patrick Henry Fellowship Literary Award.

His 2015 book on Thurgood Marshall, SHOWDOWN, is currently being developed as a documentary TV miniseries. A native of Columbus and a graduate of Miami University, Haygood also serves as Boadway Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence in Miami's Department of Media, Journalism and Film.

He was a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for his most recent book, Tigerland, about the legendary rise of an all-black segregated high school in Columbus, Ohio, that won two state championships in the year following the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. A native of Columbus and a graduate of Miami University, Haygood also serves as a distinguished scholar-in-residence in Miami's Department of Media, Journalism and Film.

The residency marked Haygood's third visit to the University of Dayton. He was the keynote speaker for the University's 2018 Martin Luther King Day celebration and returned to campus in October 2018 for the Speaker Series to discuss Tigerland.

About Tigerland

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.