Blood done sign my name

a true story

355 pages

English language

Published Feb. 15, 2004 by Crown Publishers.

ISBN:
978-0-609-61058-9
Copied ISBN!
OCLC Number:
53019249

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4 stars (1 review)

"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 …

3 editions

Memoir-heavy history with a strong sense of place

4 stars

This was more of a memoir than the history/true crime book I was expecting and it connected well with me because the author gave such a strong sense of time and place. It spoke to my experience, but was a couple of generations and a region of the state removed, which made it simultaneously familiar and strange.

At first I was skeptical about reading a book on Black history written by a white author, but he was self-aware and reflective, and I think it's important that white people talk about race (as long as that's not all you read.)

I thought it could have been a little tighter. There were a lot of digressions. Not all of them contributed to the whole, and even some that did could have been organized or placed better.

I did appreciate the wider view on the civil rights movement, I wasn't aware of how …

Subjects

  • Tyson, Timothy B. -- Childhood and youth
  • African Americans -- Crimes against -- North Carolina -- Oxford -- History -- 20th century
  • Murder -- North Carolina -- Oxford -- History -- 20th century
  • Trials (Murder) -- North Carolina -- Oxford
  • Riots -- North Carolina -- Oxford -- History -- 20th century
  • Whites -- North Carolina -- Oxford -- Biography
  • African Americans -- North Carolina -- Oxford -- Biography
  • Oxford (N.C.) -- Race relations
  • Oxford (N.C.) -- Biography