Grimwood University had two claims to fame. One was a man. The other, an event. And while the man, author and professor Alan Grimwood, wouldn’t live to see the benefits of his own notoriety, he did bear witness to the tragedy that would forever sear his family’s name, and the college they founded, into the minds of Americans everywhere.

One year after the Attica Prison riot forever connected the name of that infamous correctional facility with the community in which it was located, t...