Book Review: Blood Done Sign My Name, by Timothy Tyson

One-line summary: An unsentimental and unvarnished history of the civil rights movement, told around the true story of the murder of a black man in 1970.



Reviews:

Goodreads: Average 4.08. Mode: 5 stars.
Amazon: Average 4.6. Mode: 5 stars.

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."

( Americans lie to themselves about their history )

Verdict: This isn't a history of the entire civil rights struggle, but like many non-fiction books focusing on a single event, its depth in covering that little piece of history includes a fair amount of breadth about its wider context, and I recommend this book primarily because Tyson doesn't try to BS you with pretty American fables or encourage you to be relieved that those bad old days are in the past. Also worth checking out is the movie based on the book. Blood Done Sign My Name (the movie) is a dramatization of the book's version of the historical event. As a drama, it's okay, but it's quite true to the book.

Book Review: Blood Done Sign My Name, by Timothy Tyson

One-line summary: An unsentimental and unvarnished history of the civil rights movement, told around the true story of the murder of a black man in 1970.



Reviews:

Goodreads: Average 4.08. Mode: 5 stars.
Amazon: Average 4.6. Mode: 5 stars.

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."

( Americans lie to themselves about their history )

Verdict: This isn't a history of the entire civil rights struggle, but like many non-fiction books focusing on a single event, its depth in covering that little piece of history includes a fair amount of breadth about its wider context, and I recommend this book primarily because Tyson doesn't try to BS you with pretty American fables or encourage you to be relieved that those bad old days are in the past. Also worth checking out is the movie based on the book. Blood Done Sign My Name (the movie) is a dramatization of the book's version of the historical event. As a drama, it's okay, but it's quite true to the book.