Timothy B. Tyson

In Blood Done Sign My Name, Timothy B. Tyson examines the murder of Henry Marrow, a twenty-three year old black man, in Oxford, South Carolina, on 11 May 1970. The book combines both historical research about race relations during the late 1960s, in which Tyson attempts to dispel popular myths of civil rights, with Tyson’s own memory of growing up in Oxford and the racial caste system in the town. Tyson concludes of the period and its legacy, “Everyone in this struggle, adversaries and show more advocates alike, grew up steeped in a poisonous white supremacy that distorted their understandings of history and one another. That history is not distant” (pg. 320). He argues that Americans cannot gloss over the more complex parts of this history in favor of a simplified narrative as this does an injustice to history and those who lived it.
Marrow, a veteran, demonstrated the betrayal that veterans felt after fighting on behalf of the United States’ ideals. Tyson writes, “Like generations of black veterans before them, who had come home from France or the Philippines insisting that their sacrifices had bought them full citizenship, the Vietnam generation demanded justice. Though they had paid the price, more would be required” (pg. 9). Like Eugene Genovese’s Roll, Jordan, Roll, Tyson uses paternalism to explain the race relations of the mid-twentieth century. He writes, “Paternalism was like a dance whose steps required my grandmother to provide charity to black people, as long as they followed the prescribed routine – that is, coming to the back door, hat in hand; accepting whatever largesse was offered; furnishing effusive expressions of gratitude; and at least pretending to accept their subordinate position in the social hierarchy” (pg. 25). While whites that subscribed to this system believed it represented harmony, it prevented any real connections from forming between Oxford’s white and black residents.
Like Gail Bederman and others, Tyson links race with gender, writing, “Segregation…existed to protect white womanhood from the abomination of contact with uncontrollable black men. Whites who questioned segregation confronted the inevitable and, for most people, conclusive cross-examination: Would you want your daughter to marry one?” (pg. 37). This played a key role in Marrow’s death as his murderers accused him of saying something flirtatious to a white woman. In grounding the civil rights struggle in the backdrop of the Cold War, Tyson writes, “The Cold War competition between the United States and the Soviet Union offered African Americans the unique leverage to redeem or repudiate American democracy in the eyes of the world. The demonstrations in the streets of the civil rights-era South were carefully staged dramas that forced the contradictions of American democracy to the surface” (pg. 67). This forced this issue to a head since it embarrassed the American government on the international stage.
In contradicting the traditional narrative of civil rights, Tyson writes, “Polling data revealed that the majority of white Americans in 1963, prior to the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, believed that the movement for racial equality had already proceeded ‘too far and too fast’” (pg. 106). Rather than accept change, white Americans were compelled by the federal government in 1964 and even then still attempted to avoid government coercion. To this end, Tyson writes, “Those who tell themselves that white people of goodwill voluntarily handed over first-class citizenship to their fellow citizens of color find comfort in selective memory and wishful thinking” (pg. 249). In addition to overturning the popular narrative of civil rights, Tyson works to combat the popular narrative of the Civil War in the South. He writes, “White supremacists and neo-Confederates have made enthusiasm for the Confederacy posthumously unanimous. Some of them will even try to tell you that the slaves loyally supported the Confederacy, which is just a damn lie” (pg. 172). Despite this lie, it demonstrates the lingering need in the South to justify the racial hierarchy established after Reconstruction. show less

During the summer of 1955, fourteen-year-old Emmett Till and his cousins traveled from Chicago to Mississippi to visit extended family. Though cautioned by his mother beforehand about extreme social (i.e., racial) etiquette in the deep south, Emmett apparently committed a faux pas in the company of a young white woman, the precise nature of which is still unclear more than six decades later. Late that night, Emmett was kidnapped by the woman's family and mercilessly, brutally murdered. show more Though the outcome of the trial which followed took no one by surprise (and most would say it had been a foregone conclusion), the nationwide attention the murder case received was ultimately the catalyst for the civil rights movement. While author Timothy Tyson relates here the shocking and heartbreaking story of Emmett Till, he also provides historical background in an attempt to help the reader understand the sad state of affairs that made lynching a socially acceptable practice among white folks in a backward place like Mississippi. This is a distressing, heavy read made more so when one thinks about how little has changed in the intervening years. show less

"White America's heritage of imagining blacks as fierce criminals, intent on political and sexual domination, as threatening bodies to be monitored and controlled, has never disappeared."

"In many inner cities the drug trade is the only enterprise that is hiring, while the national unemployment rate for young black men is well over twice that for other young men."

"We are still killing black youth because we have not yet killed white supremacy."

Wow. Just wow. This is an excellent historical show more telling of the murder of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African-American boy killed in 1955 by white men in Mississippi. Emmett was visiting Mississippi for the summer; his home was in Chicago. Tyson does an excellent job of sorting through what is known, what is suspected, and what can be concluded from this brutal and senseless murder of a young Black boy at the hands of white supremacist men, angry at his apparent disrespectful comments to one of their wives. Even if Till did the worst of that which he was accused of doing: grabbing the hand of a white woman at a store counter, asking her for a date, wolf-whistling at her later as she went to her car for a pistol.... none of that even remotely deserves the kind of brutal beating and slaying to which he was subjected. His body was found a few days later, bloated and damaged, floating in the Tallahatchie River with a gin fan tied to his neck with a stretch of barbed wire. The murder is tagged as a significant catalyst for the civil rights movement of the mid-20th century.

Most of the book is an exploration of history. What happened in Leflore County of Mississippi on August 28, 1955? Tyson shifts deftly between historical record and rational deduction.

It's his epilogue, though, that lands a direct hit. He persuasively describes the white supremacy that yet permeates our society, perhaps not the virulent and visceral white supremacy of the men who murdered young Emmett Till, but the polite and practiced white supremacy of progressives (like me), well-intentioned members of society who remain immobile in the face of today's persistent and pernicious societal segregation, today's Jim Crow. Tyson is not throwing stones, but his analysis is compelling and level-headed.

This is a surprisingly quick read and highly recommended. It's a great history lesson and a thought-provoking work. show less

I think I was a bit afraid this book would be too big a downer, and it certainly is not a happy story, but it is very well written and contains enough hope to keep it from being cripplingly sad.

It is amazing that I had never heard this story, and that is part of the problem, I guess. I grew up in the Piedmont of North Carolina and was five years old when the murder depicted in this book happened. Of course, I was too young to hear of it then, but I have not heard of it since either. I know show more civil rights have been long and hard fought in our country, but have always felt my little corner of the world did okay. I was in the first integrated class in my school and had a black teacher for first grade, and never had a problem or heard any bad things about it. (I liked Mrs. Dailey way better than the white teacher next door, who would not believe I had headaches until I threw up on her shoes!)

So this book was a sobering introduction to the state of race relations at that time in our state. But I was also pleased to read some of the history of liberals in the South, because often I've thought I was a rarity. It is nice to see that the world has never been 100% one way or the other, and that, however poorly, there have always been people fighting for good. And shout out to the Methodist ministers for being on the right side of history! show less