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Blood Done Sign My Name
Blood Done Sign My Name: A True Story | Timothy B. Tyson
22 posts | 14 read | 34 to read
"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. From the Hardcover edition.
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Susanita
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1. Celebrity endorsed? Probably not. Celebrity discussed in such a way that it‘s obvious they read the book? Probably.
2. Where don‘t I get book recommendations?? I read the tagged book because the MC in a book I was reading, was reading it for her book club.
#two4tuesday

TheSpineView Thanks for playing and happy Tuesday! 💚📚📖🌞 3y
29 likes1 comment
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TobeyTheScavengerMonk
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“The self-congratulatory popular #account insists that Dr. King called on the nation to fully accept its own creed, and the walls came a-tumbling down. This conventional narrative is soothing, moving, and politically acceptable, and has only the disadvantage of bearing no resemblance to what actually happened.”

#account #QuotsyMay19

Tamra 😑 6y
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TobeyTheScavengerMonk
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“It baffles me that people think that obliterating the past will save them from its consequences, as if throwing away the empty cake plate would help you lose weight.”

#Consequence #QuotsyMarch18

Tamra Truth 7y
JazzFeathers Great quote! 7y
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KellyHunsakerReads
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Anothe Litten posted this one recently, do I stacked it. Luckily #playster had it! Listening now. #nonfiction #audiobook

Kaye Welcome, a little late 🌸 I‘ve missed out on all the new members til I found the list. It looks like you have lots of great audiobooks ! 7y
KellyHunsakerReads Where is the list? Yes, I use Playster, Overdrive and Audible. Sometimes LibriVox. 7y
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azulaco
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Pickpick

Oh, this book. Amazing, horrifying, insightful. Its starting point is a the murder of a black man that takes place in 1970. That‘s a jumping-off pint for an examination of racism and the civil rights movement in North Carolina. Some fascinating history, and a lot of I-can‘t-believe-that-actually-happened moments. Important read. I recommend it to everyone.

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azulaco
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“It baffles me that people think that obliterating the past will save them from its consequences, as if throwing away the empty cake plate would help you lose weight.”

shendrix413 That's just awesome and perfect and speaks so much about the racism that's occurred in America throughout its history 7y
azulaco @shendrix413 This whole book is like that. It is amazing, and SO good. 7y
shendrix413 @azulaco This book is now at the top of my TBR! 7y
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azulaco
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“[On May 30, 1970,] The editors [of the Carolina Times, a black newspaper,] noting several beatings and killings by [NC] state troopers, reported dozens of complaints about “brutality committed against blacks by Highway patrolmen.” Middle-class white people, on the other hand, generally regarded the highway patrol as nice men who issued traffic tickets, which could be thrown out if you knew the right lawyer.”

47 years later...here we still are.

DivineDiana ☹️ 7y
RebelReader Sadly true. 🙁 7y
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azulaco
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azulaco
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“A moderate by temperament and inclination, Coltrane tended to stress the importance of “communication” between the races, as if slavery and segregation had been some terrible misunderstanding. The “race problem,” his calm words suggested, could be solved if the right people were on the committee.”

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azulaco
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This is SO good. I‘m so happy I picked it to be my #NorthCarolina read for #usareadingroadtrip.

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TobeyTheScavengerMonk
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#setnearwhereyoulive #riotgrams

Oxford, NC is about two hours and some change directly east of me, but this true tale of growing up grappling with racism in the South hit close to home.

My dad basically told me to read this or he would disown me, and I'm so glad I did. This book helped me come to grips with the dichotomy of living in a pleasant little town where the Klan was and is a horrifying and disgusting presence.

Texreader Yikes!! 7y
ReadingEnvy Sounds like a book to read, Greenville, sc, here. 7y
Izai.Amorim Stacked! 7y
53 likes5 stack adds4 comments
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TobeyTheScavengerMonk
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"If there is to be reconciliation, first there must be #truth "

I posted an awful book for this prompt earlier, so I wanted to post a good one too. My dad basically said I had to read this or he would disown me, and I'm glad I did. It is an unflinching look as race relations in a town not too far from mine, with Tyson facing the ugly reality of life in the South head on. A great read. #maybookflowers

RealBooks4ever I second the recommendation! 👍🏼 8y
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ness
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Pickpick

This is a memoir & a history of the civil rights movement. Tyson's daddy wanted to be a "swinging door" between blacks & whites, explaining the civil rights movement to whites in a way they would find palatable. Tyson is doing the same thing, talking about racism, white supremacy & white privilege to all of us who have grown up on the "poisonous lie" America is built on: that God confers moral superiority based on skin pigmentation.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

TobeyTheScavengerMonk This was far outside my typical genre preference, but my dad pretty much told me I had to read this or else. So glad I did. 8y
9 likes1 comment
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ness
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As far as I know, this is still the case. Sweet Jesus.

Mariposa_Bookworm I've heard such good things about this book. I need to read it. 8y
ness @Mariposa_Bookworm The writing is beautiful, and a lot of it is hard to read. It's definitely one of those hard-but-important books. 8y
Mariposa_Bookworm @ness I think that is what has made me shy away from it. I already know it's going to be a difficult read and with some of the things happening today, it makes it even more difficult. 8y
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ness
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Timothy Tyson does not pull his punches.

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ness
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Timothy Tyson's dropping knowledge.

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ness
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Truth.

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ness
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For the #litsybingo challenge, choose a book with a setting less than 100 miles from you. This actually happened in the county where I live.

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Hobbinol
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Regarding the march that followed a homicide in Oxford, NC:

"Atop the wagon sat Willie Mae Marrow, the bereaved widow, visibly pregnant with the dead man's third child, wearing a dark veil and holding one young daughter on her lap while comforting another. 'That was the symbolic part,' Frinks explained. The mule cart echoed the one that had hauled Dr. King's coffin through the streets of Atlanta two years earlier."

#InspiredByMartinLutherKingJr

Hobbinol Photo from blackthen.com #readjanuary (edited) 8y
51 likes1 comment
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MLRio
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Pickpick

A thorough and insightful (if occasionally meandering) account of murder and the Civil Rights Movement in a small North Carolina town.

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MLRio

We are runaway slaves from our own past, and only by turning to face the hounds can we find our freedom beyond them.

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MLRio
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Currently reading! Meant to read this ages ago because I knew the family in high school but never got around to it.