After growing up roughly 70 miles west of Oxford, North Carolina, I understand many of the customs and attitudes Timothy B. Tyson refers to in Blood Done Sign My Name. He is only a couple of years older than I am and our socio-economic backgrounds are fairly similar. It was surprising that Tyson provided so much insight into my childhood background static of racism.

He explains the insidiousness of paternalism, for example, and how people are dehumanized by it. Being nice to people does not make up for treating them as second-class citizens and denying them equal treatment.

Tyson does a great job of interweaving the events of this shocking, largely overlooked story with his own family and how it affected them. When a 23-year-old Black Vietnam veteran walked into a store in Oxford, North Carolina, on a May evening in 1970, he was quickly chased out by the store’s owner and two of his sons and was beaten and then shot to death in plain view on the street. Tyson was friends with the youngest son of the store’s owner.

The first line of the book is chilling enough. But the events that followed the murder affected the town and Tyson’s family make for riveting reading. His father was the minister of the town’s all-White Methodist church, and the family was forced to move by his father’s congregation. Many members, wanting to maintain the status quo, were simply unwilling to listen to a minister who believed in equal rights.

The author’s mother was a teacher and in the end, he realizes that by becoming a historian who covers the struggle for civil rights, he has followed in her footsteps as a teacher. But he also comes to embrace the evangelism he shares with his father. He, too, is on a mission to help us all understand the complicated and tragic events in America’s racial history and the fact that there is still a lot to be reckoned with. ( )

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This book is very interesting in what it is. I can’t say that it is… or will...or ever would be one of my favorites…or that I would want to read it again...but it IS honest and brutal about the nature of the historical interactions between black and white races. I grew up in the deep south in the 50’s and 60’s and can sadly say that it is indeed honest in the author’s assessment of the racial situation. Be aware that some of the content is extremely graphic and the story will not be suitable for everyone by any stretch of the imagination. The story is Tim Tyson’s account of going back and confronting many of his memories of this event and looking at them through the eyes of an adult instead of those of a child. It's a well written account and good as far as the writing is concerned but sad and tragic beyond measure in the reality. As I said it will NOT be for everyone. ( )

"Daddy and Roger and 'em shot 'em a nigger" With that announcement from a childhood friend, a white preacher's son begins recounting that moment in 1970 (he was 10) and all that followed from the murder of Henry Morrow in Oxford, North Carolina. This is a startling, sad, and passionate book on American racism, and a warning to heed the events of history and remember. When the author presented his library with a copy of his dissertation on the subject, the pages recounting the killing were torn out, and the state archives & local archives are missing the newspapers that recounted events during that time. Essential reading. You will learn. ( )

I don't rate many five stars. This is a model for historians, worth all the years it took Tyson to perfect it and get it published! Page-turning proof that truth IS more exciting than fiction. ( )