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Unbeknownst to nearly everyone, he was forty-six.

He was a man whose life was cut tragically short, but who, in the words of Clyde Emrich, former Bears strength coach, “was given ninety years and . . . lived them all in [forty-six].” He trusted most everyone he met, and often paid for it. He never turned down a child’s autograph request, and was unconditionally loved for it. His nickname, “Sweetness,” was both perfect and misplaced.

“I lockered next to him for six or seven years,” said Jay Hilgenberg, the longtime Bears center, “and I got to know him very well. We were friends, and I really loved the man.”

Hilgenberg paused. He was sitting inside a golf clubhouse in Kenosha, Wisconsin. He rubbed a chin layered with gray stubble. A perplexed look flashed across his face.

“But do I understand Walter Payton?” he said. Another pause. “No, I don’t. I’m not sure anyone does.”

PART ONE

COLUMBIA

Tommy Davis,

Columbia High School football coach

We were playing Franklin County and we were undefeated and rolling along. That afternoon the visiting team arrived and one of our equipment managers found one of their scouting reports. He brought it in, gave it to me, and they had Walter Payton, number twenty-two, identified as “Billy Joe Badass Himself.” I showed that to Walter privately. “Look what they’re saying about you,” I said. Well, he looked at that and he began to grit his teeth, and you could see the muscles tightening in his jaw. He handed it back to me without saying a word. We went out there and killed Franklin County, twenty-seven to zero, and he scored three touchdowns and kicked three extra points. You just didn’t mess with Walter.

CHAPTER 1

BUBBA

CHIP LOFTIN HAD A FESTIVE PARTY ON HIS FIFTH BIRTHDAY.

We know this because, on April 16, 1970, the editors of the Columbian-Progress —Columbia, Mississippi’s weekly newspaper of record—deemed the affair important enough to warrant a front-page story. There’s the headline, right below a black-and-white photograph of l’il Chip, smiling widely beneath an unruly mop of blond hair: CHIP LOFTIN HAS FESTIVE PARTY ON FIFTH BIRTHDAY.

The content of the article is nothing short of riveting. The party was thrown by Chip’s mother, Mrs. B. G. Loftin, and was held from three thirty to five P.M. at the city park. “Chip and his friends enjoyed the playground,” the piece read, “after which they assembled while he opened and displayed his birthday gifts.” Chip’s cake, baked by his mom and his aunt Shelby, depicted an automobile racetrack. Chocolate iced cupcakes, ice cream, and punch were also served, “from a picnic table covered with a birthday cloth.”

Not that Chip’s bash alone dominated the day’s news. There were other fascinating front-page stories in the Progress; pressing orders of business like LAMPTON HOME LUNCHEON SETTING FOR MISS BERRY and MAY HOMEMAKERS HOLD APRIL MEET. Inside the fourteen-page paper, one could read about the wedding nuptials of Mr. and Mrs. Richard Hulon Davis; about a lovely party at the Fausts’ house; about Columbia High School’s scrappy baseball team; and a thrilling yard sale one town over.

Founded in 1882 with the merging of two other publications, the newspaper’s name—Progress—had long dripped of cruel irony. Though in 1970 nearly 30 percent of Columbia’s population was black, Lester Williams, the longtime editor and publisher, deemed the happenings of his city’s minority denizens to be of little-to-no consequence. Forget covering the ongoing struggle of Mississippi’s black population to garner equal footing—the Progress refused to acknowledge there was a struggle; that, sixteen years after Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka deemed separate-but-equal to be illegal, nearly everything in Columbia remained separate and strikingly unequal.

The fact that the owner of Columbia’s lone roller rink, Royal Skating, denied blacks entrance? Not newsworthy. The fact that many of the town’s physicians refused to see black patients? Not a story. The fact that the town