Book Study "Blood Done Sign My Name"

Epilogue

2010-02-27T23:04:00.001-05:00

Here Tim turns from author to teacher, recalling taking a racially mixed college class on a bus trip through southern racial history, not unlike our own "Freedom Ride, 2010." He then goes on to explain what Blood Done Sign My Name means to him and why it should be important to us.

After we visit Somerset Place and Stagville, consider how your experience compares with that of Tim’s students ten years ago when they visited Destrehan Plantation in New Orleans. [Leaders should note that Tim's African-American students were traumatized by the tour's indifference to the black history there.]

Why does Tim consider the book title and the book itself to be, in musical terms, a combination of blues, gospel, and rock ‘n roll?

What in Tim’s view is problematic about the popular view of Martin Luther King, Jr. and his role in the civil rights struggle? Do you agree?

Chapter 12

2010-02-27T23:00:00.001-05:00

The last chapter tells the story of Tim’s resolution to return to Oxford and tell the story that becomes first a Master’s Thesis and then Blood Done Sign My Name. The chapter also recounts some harrowing moments of research and a reminder that Jim Crow was still alive in the 1990s.

On page 307, Tim ponders a question asked him as he was writing this book. Some of your friends or family may have asked you the same kind of question when you signed up for "Freedom Ride 2010: A Journey of Reconciliation.” “Why dredge this stuff up? Why linger on the past which we cannot change. We must move toward a brighter future and leave all that horror behind.

How does Tim answer that question? How do you?

Chapter 11

2010-02-26T23:20:00.000-05:00

The story moves with the Tysons from Oxford to Wilmington, as Vernon’s attempts at racial reconciliation alienate key members of his Oxford congregation and he is reassigned. The chapter begins with racial violence in Wilmington, recalling the Wilmington Race Riot of 1898 and detailing events in 1971 surrounding the “Wilmington Ten”( led by none other than Ben Chavis). The latter part of the chapter focuses on Tim’s own difficult journey to adulthood, as he confronts the demons of adolescence and of being white, southern, and witness to racial atrocities.

Tyson says that the Wilmington Race Riot of 1898 was “probably the most important political event in the history of the state” and that its “omission from North Carolina history may have been the biggest of the lies that marked my boyhood.” (p. 271) We begin our own bus journey in Wilmingon. Were you taught about this event in school? Why do you think Tim believes it is so important?

What are some of the problematic moments in Tim’s “journey to adulthood”? As one also on a “journey to adulthood,” can you relate to any of those experiences? What about his relationship with his parents, especially his father?

Chapter 10

2010-02-24T23:06:00.000-05:00

The chapter opens with the military precision with which lumber and tobacco warehouses were torched and burned in Oxford, and then centers on details of the trial of Robert and Larry Teel.

Tyson seems to believe the trial was a gross miscarriage of justice, which gave cover to those who insisted before the trial began that the all-white jury would take care of their own, regardless of the evidence. Do you agree? Why or why not?

Where was God, do you think, when all this happened? Where were God’s people?

Chapter 9

2010-02-24T20:44:00.000-05:00

This chapter focuses on the March on Raleigh by angry blacks in Oxford convinced Robert Teel would not receive justice. Tyson argues that, far from being united in method, some of the marchers such as Ben Chavis were inclined toward non-violent economic pressures, whereas others, especially Vietnam War veterans, believed only violence would get the attention of the white power establishment.

What do you make of Tyson’s view, reflected in several places throughout the book, that the Civil Rights struggle did not succeed in ending the Jim Crow era because of non-violent civil disobedience alone, but only in conjunction with terrorist activities that propelled whites into responsiveness? Are there lessons to be learned in waging our current war against Islamic terrorists?

What is the importance of Lonnie Field’s mule to the march? To the effectiveness of this chapter?

Chapter 8

2010-02-24T15:22:00.000-05:00

Tyson recounts the story of his own family heritage in the context of the broader history of the “other South,” his presentation of evidence that even among whites there had been more substantial resistance to both secession and later segregation than is normally recognized.

How much more is a family tree than just how a name gets passed along? Think about your own personal characteristics, and then like Tyson reflect on how many of them you see also in a grandparent, parent, uncle, aunt, or cousin.

Stereotypes are characterizations that put a lot of different people into one oversimplified box, often in ways that are dismissive or hurtful. The thrust of Tyson’s book is to challenge stereotypes about whites, blacks, Christians, southerners, to name a few. On occasion, however, he himself seems to buy into stereotypes: “Free Will Baptists displayed more emotion in church than Methodists and would have made an Episcopalian squirm, but did not ‘speak in tongues’ and cavort like Pentecostal holy rollers.” (p. 174) How do you feel about the “frozen chosen” stereotype often applied to Episcopalians? How do you think Pentecostals feel about their religion being so often reduced to the cavorting [often “with snakes”], tongue-speaking, holy roller image?

Chapter 7

2010-02-24T15:05:00.001-05:00

The funeral of Henry Morrow is the basis for this chapter but not the focus. The focus is on how national black leaders like Golden Frinks and local blacks like Ben Chavis and Eddie McCoy turned the tragedy into a cause for action. The author uses Oxford’s courthouse confederate monument, the location of a post-funeral black demonstration, as an opportunity to discuss a time in post-Civil War North Carolina when black and white farmers worked in common cause and gained considerable, but short-lived political clout.

What united black and white farmers (to some degree anyway) in the 1890s? How did the proliferation of courthouse confederate monuments in the early 1900s represent the end of that unity movement?

Why did the Chavis family want Golden Frinks to come to the funeral? What is your opinion of the politicizing of what normally would have been a private matter between family and friends of a beloved departed?

What were the feelings Vernon Tyson and Chad Stem experienced as the only white citizens of Oxford to attend “Dickie” Morrow’s funeral? While they accompanied the procession to the graveyard, they did not continue on to the confederate monument—why not?

To what extent to you agree or empathize with Eddie McCoy’s statements in 2003 to students at the University of North Carolina?

Chapter 6

2010-02-12T09:42:00.001-05:00

This chapter returns to the murder of Henry Morrow and describes in detail what happened and the aftermath among both whites and blacks, with significant attention paid to the Chavis family with whom Henry Morrow had lived.

Tim Tyson was a young boy when all this happened? What are the sources of his information? How reliable is his account, published some 34 years after the event being described?

Tyson seems convinced that the police and justice system failed Henry Morrow and his family, along with the entire black population? Do you agree? Why or why not?

In your own experience, do you see the police and justice system as your friend or your adversary? Upon what experience do you base this assessment?

Chapter 5

2010-02-12T09:33:00.000-05:00

After describing racial tensions in the Tysons’ new town of Oxford, this chapter narrates the effects of Martin Luther King’s 1968 assassination on blacks and whites there, focusing on the Tyson household and Vernon’s church. Tim gives us a touch of humor in his relationship with the town’s outspoken, unrepentant poet laureate Chad Stem, and ends with a solemn promise from the boy to his elder.

What did World War II have to do with civil rights struggles?

How does Oxford compare with how your town probably was forty years ago? Have you heard stories about or had first-hand experience with black servants? Is there in North Carolina in our time a certain race or ethnic group that does much of the domestic work and most of the backbreaking farm work?

Can you guess what Tim’s promise is to Chad? Are there any promises you have made to yourself or others that miles (and years) from now you think you will feel the need to keep?

Chapter 4

2010-02-12T09:25:00.000-05:00

This chapter reveals some clever storytelling by the author, as he contextualizes his father’s struggles as a white liberal Methodist minister with a running account of the black civil rights struggles of the ‘60s.

How would you describe Dr. King’s overarching strategy in leading the struggle for racial equality in the Jim Crow South? What was the Jim Crow South?

How does Tyson turn his discussion of civil rights struggles in the South to focus on North Carolina? (see page 67)

What is the “Letter from the Birmingham Jail,” and what is its significance?

What does it mean to “witness”? How does Miss Amy witness? How does Vernon Tyson witness? How does Martha Tyson witness? How does Dr. Proctor witness? How does the wholesale grocery store salesman named Carl witness? Who else in this chapter “witnesses”? How do YOU witness? What is distinctive about Christian witness?

Chapter 3

2010-02-12T09:09:00.001-05:00

This chapter focuses on Robert Teel, the perpetrator of the central act of violence in the book and a profile of the racial hatred fomented by the Ku Klux Klan. It also describes the Klan and the strong black opposition that arose against it.

What are some of the factors that shaped Robert Teel into the person he became?

How does Tyson account for the rise and then partial decline of the Klan during this time?

Are there fear and hate mongers in our own time? Who are they? How can they be opposed? How do we distinguish hate mongers from those who simply disagree with us and express themselves strongly?

Chapter 2

2010-02-11T21:49:00.002-05:00

Chapter two backs up and gives historical background on slavery, segregation and the culture that kept a culture of white supremacy alive, all of which led to Henry Marrow’s shooting.

“Tobacco put food on our tables, steeples on our churches, stains on our fingers, spots on our lungs, and contradictions in our hearts.” What do you make of this statement on page 13?

“We always had good race relations here.” What is the context of this statement on page 15?

On page 17, Tyson says, ”White supremacy permeated daily life [of his childhood in Oxford, NC] so deeply that most people could no more ponder it than a fish might discuss the wetness of water.” What does that mean? In what ways did a culture of white supremacy permeate daily life in the Oxford of 1970? Do you think there are practices common in our daily lives in 2010 that our children 30 years from now will find equally unacceptable, practices that are so much a part of our daily lives now that we can’t understand problems there any more than a fish can understand water?

Page 29 explains how the book title came about. What is it from?

How do blacks’ memories of slavery differ from accounts white people tell each other?

What do cigarettes, sex, and sin have to do with segregation and this chapter? How did a pre-adolescent Tim come to an unusual understanding of some of the “facts of life” and how does that compare with your own sex education?

Who are James Baldwin and James J. Kilpatrick? What is the meaning in a televised debate of this statement by Baldwin to Kilpatrick: “You’re not worried about me marrying your daughter—you’re worried about me marrying your wife’s daughter. I’ve been marrying your daughter since the days of slavery.” (p. 39)

Chapter 1

2010-02-11T21:21:00.002-05:00

In this chapter we read about the murder of Henry Marrow, “Dickie,” and the ensuing riots in the town of Oxford, NC, as seen through the eyes of a ten-year-old, who later writes this book.

Tim’s mother describes his friend Gerald as “not really our kind of folks.” Were there kids when you were 10 years old whom you knew those closest to you would consider not your kind of folks? In what ways were they not “your kind of folks”? In hindsight, was that a fair assessment? As a Christian, how do you deal with people who are not “your kind of folks”?

“I pondered, too, the blood that beat in my own veins and the ways in which my family’s history was implicated in Henry Marrow’s killing—and perhaps ever redeemed, since by the end of things, if anything ever really ends, his killings set our faces toward a strange new Jerusalem.” What do you think Tim is referring to as ‘a strange new Jerusalem?”

Are there taboo subjects that are not talked about with your family, church, etc.?

Can you think of anything that has happened in your life in terms of injustice towards others that you feel might resonate twenty or thirty years later when you will have a better understanding such that you might want to write about it?

Study Guide to Blood Done Sign My Name

2010-02-11T14:03:00.001-05:00

As we are preparing for this summer's Freedom Ride 2010, each team members has been asked to read "Blood Done Sign My Name" and "Proud Shoes." This blog is a tool to help with encouraging discussion about these two books. I have asked Pete Crow to begin this conversation. Please add to and comment to his questions once they are posted.