Blood Done Sign My Name: A True Story [Hardcover]

Timothy B. Tyson (Author)

Book Description

Release date: May 18, 2004

"Daddy and Roger and 'em shot 'em a nigger."

Those words, whispered to ten-year-old Tim Tyson by one of his playmates in the late spring of 1970, heralded a firestorm that would forever transform the small tobacco market town of Oxford, North Carolina.

On May 11, 1970, Henry Marrow, a 23-year-old black veteran, walked into a crossroads store owned by Robert Teel, a rough man with a criminal record and ties to the Ku Klux Klan, and came out running. Teel and two of his sons chased Marrow, beat him unmercifully, and killed him in public as he pleaded for his life. In the words of a local prosecutor: "They shot him like you or I would kill a snake."

Like many small Southern towns, Oxford had barely been touched by the civil rights movement. But in the wake of the killing, young African Americans took to the streets, led by 22-year-old Ben Chavis, a future president of the NAACP. As mass protests crowded the town square, a cluster of returning Vietnam veterans organized what one termed "a military operation." While lawyers battled in the courthouse that summer in a drama that one termed "a Perry Mason kind of thing," the Ku Klux Klan raged in the shadows and black veterans torched the town's tobacco warehouses.

With large sections of the town in flames, Tyson's father, the pastor of Oxford's all-white Methodist church, pressed his congregation to widen their vision of humanity and pushed the town to come to terms with its bloody racial history. In the end, however, the Tyson family was forced to move away.

Years later, historian Tim Tyson returned to Oxford to ask Robert Teel why he and his sons had killed Henry Marrow. "That nigger committed suicide, coming in here wanting to four-letter-word my daughter-in-law," Teel explained.

The black radicals who burned much of Oxford also told Tim their stories. "It was like we had a cash register up there at the pool hall, just ringing up how much money we done cost these white people," one of them explained. "We knew if we cost 'em enough goddamn money they was gonna start changing some things."

In the tradition of To Kill a Mockingbird, Blood Done Sign My Name is a classic work of conscience, a defining portrait of a time and place that we will never forget. Tim Tyson's riveting narrative of that fiery summer and one family's struggle to build bridges in a time of destruction brings gritty blues truth, soaring gospel vision, and down-home humor to our complex history, where violence and faith, courage and evil, despair and hope all mingle to illuminate America's enduring chasm of race.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

When he was but 10 years old, Tim Tyson heard one of his boyhood friends in Oxford, N.C. excitedly blurt the words that were to forever change his life: "Daddy and Roger and 'em shot 'em a nigger!" The cold-blooded street murder of young Henry Marrow by an ambitious, hot-tempered local businessman and his kin in the Spring of 1970 would quickly fan the long-flickering flames of racial discord in the proud, insular tobacco town into explosions of rage and street violence. It would also turn the white Tyson down a long, troubled reconciliation with his Southern roots that eventually led to a professorship in African-American studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison--and this profoundly moving, if deeply troubling personal meditation on the true costs of America's historical racial divide. Taking its title from a traditional African-American spiritual, Tyson skillfully interweaves insightful autobiography (his father was the town's anti-segregationist Methodist minister, and a man whose conscience and human decency greatly informs the son) with a painstakingly nuanced historical analysis that underscores how little really changed in the years and decades after the Civil Rights Act of 1965 supposedly ended racial segregation. The details are often chilling: Oxford simply closed its public recreation facilities rather than integrate them; Marrow's accused murderers were publicly condemned, yet acquitted; the very town's newspaper records of the events--and indeed the author's later account for his graduate thesis--mysteriously removed from local public records. But Tyson's own impassioned personal history lessons here won't be denied; they're painful, yet necessary reminders of a poisonous American racial legacy that's so often been casually rewritten--and too easily carried forward into yet another century by politicians eagerly employing the cynical, so-called "Southern Strategy." --Jerry McCulley

From Publishers Weekly

In this outstanding personal history, Tyson, a professor of African-American studies who's white, unflinchingly examines the civil rights struggle in the South. The book focuses on the murder of a young black man, Henry Marrow, in 1970, a tragedy that dramatically widened the racial gap in the author's hometown of Oxford, N.C. Tyson portrays the killing and its aftermath from multiple perspectives, including that of his contemporary, 10-year-old self; his progressive Methodist pastor father, who strove to lead his parishioners to overcome their prejudices; members of the disempowered black community; one of the killers; and his older self, who comes to Oxford with a historian's eye. He also artfully interweaves the history of race relations in the South, carefully and convincingly rejecting less complex and self-serving versions ("violence and nonviolence were both more ethically complicated-and more tightly intertwined-than they appeared in most media accounts and history books"). A gifted writer, he celebrates a number of inspirational unsung heroes, ranging from his father to a respected elderly schoolteacher who spoke out at a crucial point to quash a white congregation's rebellion over an invitation to a black minister. Tyson's avoidance of stereotypes and simple answers brings a shameful recent era in our country's history to vivid life. This book deserves the largest possible audience. FYI:Tyson's last book, Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of Black Power (1999), won the James Rawley Prize and was co-winner of the Frederick Jackson Turner Prize.
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Crown; First Edition edition (May 18, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0609610589
• ISBN-13: 978-0609610589
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (70 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #524,671 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Timothy B. Tyson is Senior Research Scholar at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, Visiting Professor of American Christianity and Southern Culture at Duke Divinity School, and adjunct professor of American Studies at the University of North Carolina. Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of Black Power (1999) won the James Rawley Prize for best book on race and the Frederick Jackson Turner Prize for best first book in U.S. History from the Organization of American Historians. Blood Done Sign My Name (2004) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, won the Southern Book Award for Nonfiction and the Grawemeyer Award in Religion, among others. He serves on the executive board of the North Carolina NAACP.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

62 of 67 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars News Photographer Assigned To Oxford Murder Trial March 10, 2006

By Harold Barker

Format:Hardcover

I learned about Blood Done Sign My Name in June 2005. I always wondered if anyone had told the story that changed my view of life in just two days.

In August 1970, I was a young photographer on the weekend shift at the Raleigh News and Observer. An assignment came in to meet a reporter in a small town north of Raleigh. No details. Just meet the reporter.

When I got into Oxford, the reporter told me a man would soon be testifying in a murder trial and that he needed a photo of that man. I parked across from the Courthouse. I put a 200 mm lens on my Nikon motor drive and waited. Soon a police vehicle pulled up with a single man in the back. As the man exited the car, I climbed out and got ready to make the picture.

As luck would have it, the man had a newspaper covering his face. He walked a few steps, dropped the paper, and looked straight at me. I took the photo and got out of town.

The next morning, I was ordered to return to Oxford. Big mistake. The photo of the third killer appeared on front page on the local newstands, and this did not go well with the locals. The verdict came and the streets emptied. I took a last photograph as a line of police officers passed me on the street. Moments later they were back surrounding me. One pulled a knife and poked me in the stomach. The older man with the knife started to tell me I was at my end. I don't know what made me say I only made $2.00 an hour. The redneck just looked at me and said I was an idiot to risk my life for $2.00 and I agreed. They let me go.

Shortly afterward, I got to my car and hit the road south. A group of locals followed me in a truck while I was flat out in my Ford Pinto. I laugh these days when I think about that longhair photographer being chased down the highway at full speed. It was straight from Hollywood but it was very real.

I never knew the whole story until I read the book. The paper thought I wanted to file a complaint against the police, but the thought never entered my mind for a moment. To put it bluntly, I had no idea whatsoever how much danger I was in from the moment I set foot in Oxford. And I had no interest in going back to Oxford for any reason.

I put the whole story out of my mind except for the photographs that still hang in my home. Then I read the book. If you want to begin to understand America, you need to read the book carefully. The story is real. The story is about America and a past that cannot be forgotten.

A few days later, the News and Observer fired me for being too aggressive. I've always thought it was a badge of honor to be fired for becoming part of a story. I never worked as a photographer again. But I remember... Read the book...

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Spot On August 18, 2009

By Ben Raines

Format:Paperback

When Robert Teel shot Henry Marrow I was one month short of high school graduation. I worked at Buy Rite, a small grocery store about a mile from where the shooting took place. Just before dark, the police came in and told us to close up - that a curfew was going into effect at dusk. We shut down the store and I drove the few blocks down Broad Street to Main Street, past the home of Robert Teel. True to Timothy Tyson's reporting, Teel's house was surrounded by sheeted Klansmen carrying shotguns and pistols. Every light was on and no one was going to attack him or his mansion while they stood guard. My father reported the next evening that the only police officer with the courage to come out of the police station during the rioting that took place right after the shooting was the city's lone black officer.

Robert Teel gave me my first haircut as a child. I still remember sitting in his chair in the Basement Barber Shop, screaming because of the noise of the clippers next to my ears. Teels' barber shop is where my father got his hair cut. It's where town leaders, businessmen, and rural farmers hung out and talked about the events of their day and how the world was changing for the worse. I grew up in Oxford and Tyson has done an admirable job recounting his memories and the mood of the South and especially Granville County during that period.

Tyson's account is spot on. Some of the people he interviewed certainly tried to present themselves in the best light possible during an awful period in Oxford's history. Although I consider myself a bigot now, back then I was a product of the hippie generation and depending upon who you're talking to, the events and viewpoints differ widely. I lost my job at the Buy Rite when the black bag boy was told he could not sit on the checkout counter even though I was sitting there too. He was fired; I quit. My dad, and brother who also worked at the store were embarrassed by my actions. They were even more shocked when I returned home from my first tour in the Army with an Ethiopian wife. Only two years after the shooting in Grab-all, I returned to Granville County with a black wife and a son of mixed race.

Most of the people who remember that period are either dead or retired now. Yet I suspect that the attitudes have not changed that much. We don't know why we believe the way we do or have the prejudices we have, but they've been passed on to us by preceeding generations. I live in Granville County today, and not much has changed. The same families still run the county and Robert Teel still lives there; the stores he built are still there, and probably the same prejudices are still there too.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The "Other South" Revealed February 28, 2007

By Karen Franklin

Format:Paperback

At first glance, this is a historical account of the racial tumult unleashed by the 1970 killing of a black man in Oxford, North Carolina. The author, 11 years old at the time, was profoundly affected. Not only did he witness the burning of the town's infrastructure of tobacco warehouses, but his Methodist minister father was drummed out of town for preaching against racial segregation. But this story is about more than one town, or one event and its aftermath. Tyson uses Oxford as a microcosm to examine the complex history of race relations in the South. As the narrative meanders along in the circuitous and philosophical style of the Southern storyteller, Tyson proceeds to ever-deeper levels of meaning and buried history.

As someone who shares Tyson's roots in rural North Carolina, I find it particularly important to rediscover "the other South" - the South that has been systematically expunged from history. Tyson discusses the banished history of white resistance to slavery and racial segregation during the Civil War and Reconstruction. How many of us know about the "Red Strings," a secret society of anti-Confederate guerrillas and saboteurs in North Carolina? Tyson briefly recounts perhaps the most important historical event in North Carolina, the 1898 massacre of African Americans in Wilmington that overthrew Reconstruction there (and about which Tyson has also written a separate book). As Tyson lucidly explains, white supremacists and neo-Confederates have ignored all evidence to the contrary to make "enthusiasm for the Confederacy posthumously unanimous." This rewriting of history is profoundly personal for Tyson. When he visited the grave of his great-great-grandfather, who opposed slavery and hid out to avoid conscription into the Confederate army, he found that a "Sons of Confederate Veterans" marker had been placed on the grave!

Tyson similarly deconstructs the more recent, sanitized version of the Civil Rights movement. The Civil Rights struggle "was far more violent, perilous, and critical than American is willing to remember," he writes. And Martin Luther King has been transformed into an "innocuous black Santa Claus ... a benign vessel that can be filled with whatever generic good wishes the occasion dictates. Politicians who oppose everything King worked for now jostle their way onto podiums to honor his memory.... The radicalism of Dr. King's thought, the militancy of his methods, and the rebuke that he offered to American capitalism have given way to depictions of a man who never existed, caricatures invented after his death."

The history that Tyson reveals was not easy to unearth. When he went back to Tyson in search of information on the 1970 killing of Henry Marrow by a group of white men, he found that the Oxford newspaper archives for this entire historical era had vanished - from the newspaper's offices, from the local library, and even from the state repository. The court records were also partially missing, and the local police attempted to intimidate him into not revisiting the story. It is a good thing that Tyson did not submit to this intimidation, because this not-so-distant history needs to be remembered.