He came. He played. And Assistant Professor of History Bryn Upton (left) walked away from his stint as a contestant on the game show Jeopardy with his dignity, a couple thousand dollars and, best of all, a book idea now under consideration by Oxford University Press.

An expert in American history with a Ph.D. from Brandeis University, Upton, who is also an assistant track coach, has won many Jeopardy victories while playing from his couch and for years friends have encouraged him to try out.

“Jeopardy is the only game show in history to have any (credibility) in the academic community. If ‘Wheel of Fortune’ had called and asked if I’d wanted to be on I think I’d have said no,” he says with a laugh. “It just would look too bad.”

In late September, after a 16-month selection process that involved a day of testing and trial competitions in Washington, D.C., Upton flew out to L.A. to play for the big money. A slow buzzer finger and conservative betting strategy resulted in his second-place finish. The episode is scheduled to air Monday, Dec. 12.

His prize money of $2,000 paid his travel expenses with a bit to spare, but the trip was more valuable to his academic career.

While in L.A. he stayed with a colleague on the faculty at Whittier College and was invited to give a guest lecture. It being the 50th anniversary of the brutal murder of young African American Emmett Till in Mississippi and the farce of a trial that followed, Upton developed a presentation making the case that the “galvanizing moment in the civil rights movement” was not when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus but several months earlier when Till was slain.

“Till was more than the martyr the movement needed to move from the courts to the streets,” Upton contends. “He became the child of the movement lost to a violent death that was sanctioned by a code of conduct that was permitted by local and national government.”

That talk became a book proposal that is now under consideration for a series published by Oxford University Press called Pivotal Moments in American History.

Stay tuned.