Author Talk with Michael Hurd

Michael Hurd will be at the African American History Research Center at the Gregory School on Thursday, October 15, from 4:30 PM to 7:00 PM. He's coming to talk about his book, Thursday Night Lights: The Story of Black High School Football in Texas, and the evening includes a signing and a screening of the documentary The PVIL Story: Separate...But Equal?, directed by Mark Burns.

If you're not familiar with the history, the book is about the Prairie View Interscholastic League (PVIL), which ran extracurriculars for Black high schools in Texas during segregation. It's a piece of Texas sports history that doesn't always get the spotlight it deserves. The league produced eight Pro Football Hall of Fame members, including Joe Greene, Ken Houston, and Dick 'Night Train' Lane. One of its biggest traditions was the annual Turkey Day Classic between Houston's Jack Yates and Phillis Wheatley, which grew into the largest prep sports event in postwar America. The documentary The PVIL Story covers that same ground, so you'll get the story in two different formats in one night.

Hurd knows this world from a few different angles. He's a writer and historian who spent years as a sports writer for the Austin American-Statesman, USA Today, and Yahoo Sports, and he's a retired director of the Texas Institute for the Preservation of History and Culture at Prairie View A&M University. Thursday Night Lights is his third book, and it's picked up some serious praise along the way: the Texas Observer named it one of the best Texas books of the 2010-2019 decade, and the Houston Chronicle listed it as one of the 30 Most Essential Books About Texas.

Registration is required to attend, and the session is for adults 18 and older and seniors 55 and up. It runs from 4:30 PM to 7:00 PM on Thursday, October 15, at the African American History Research Center at the Gregory School.