so i really, really, really got lucky with paul pinell, too. he was the head baseball coach and also the assistant basketball coach, and so in a way i had his insight from both of the sports and that was extremely helpful. two other players from the basketball team,eddy rat live and joseph lamarr were -- they were only five members of the team and almost half the team came from this one high school who i wroteout. two of the five were first-team college all-americans. >> the name of the bike is "tigerland: a city divided a nation torn apart a magical season of healing." what book of yours are you best known for? >> guest: that would be the butler. that was turned into a motion picture. that starred, among others, oprah winfrey, forest whittaker, cuba gooding jr., david ol' well, jane fanned, and vanessa redgrave, a special movie came out in 2013. you can safely say it sort of took america by storm. an amazing heartfelt story of a gentleman who i tracked down who worked for eight american presidents, his name was eugene allen, and he had quite a

both teams had coaches who were white, bob hart for basketball, and paul pinell, baseball. bob hart land at norman day in world war ii, was a progressive, had a wonderful big heart, his last name is hart also, but he knew that this was where we wanted to be. he went to ohio wesleyan university, right outside of columbus, and he wrote this senior thesis on the unfair treatment of the negro soldier in world war 2. that was in 1946. and then 23 years later, he is on the sidelines leading this all-black high school to the state championship. >> host: why did you wait 50 years write this story? >> guest: i was born in columbus, but left to work on other newspapers, and it wasn't in my consciousness that the high school had won two state championships, and i was home about five years ago, after finishing my thurgood marshallback, and i ran into garnett differs who was on the baseball team that year, and we were walk us down the street and talking but east high and this similar year of 1968-1969, and that they won this wonderful basketball championship, and he shade to me, he said