Timothy B. Tyson - Blood Done Sign My Name: a True Story - 5

[PolarisDiB]

Blood Done Sign My Name: a True Story

My mother kept suggesting this book to my sister and me, and finally went as far as to buy copies for both of us. For me, specifically, she wanted me to read it because we have discussions all the time about youth perception of the 60s and 70s, and how my peers misguidedly think that those decades were a period of fun intellectual social response rather than the harrowing and fear-filled political times they were, full of stress and assassination and racism and hate. See, young adults these days seem to think that we're in a similar situation because there's an unpopular war going on and they like pot. I may not know much more about the 60s than they do, but I know it wasn't all sex, drugs, and rock and roll.

Timothy Tyson's "Blood Done Sign My Name" begins, echoes, and reverberates with the quote that changed his life: "Daddy and all 'em shot 'em a nigger!" From that moment when a neighborhood friend announced the tragedy, Tyson traces the story of the small town of Oxford, North Carolina, where a man named Robert Teel and his family murdered a black man in the middle of the street, got sent to trial, and got released. Tyson uses this story, along with his personal history, to provide a backing for an essay on the racial crisis of the era and how it affects us today.

Tyson makes two compelling points: "People think that shopkeepers read about the federal law in 1964 that made segregation illegal and then just cheerfully opened their doors to black people, except for maybe a few bad rednecks. This is a complete lie." His other point is that people who were tolerant but inactive in their own way helped maintain the racism just as much as the overtly racist people--that people who wouldn't stand up reinforced the status quo by refusing to engage with the people they claimed to support. Backing these points up is the tension, the stereotypes, and the utter fear that involved the era.

Although this book is an engaging essay and a stunning piece of reporting, I still didn't like it that much as a work itself. This is the difficult part of reviewing books of this nature--on one hand, the arguments and themes of this book are more important and factual than most things that I typically read, but I would have liked it more if it had more structure and there still exists the fact that I'm not entirely as interested in racial problems as probably I should be (helping to reinforce the fact that we as a society would rather forget than deal with the deranged truth of the matter). Tyson's book is a plea against forgetting the facts and where they came from, for realizing the fabric from which we wove our present from our past, and for not becoming comfortable with such popular opinions like that the 60s were a positive revolution of social thinking with no side-effects. And here is me, a modern reader born in the mid 80s with an open mind towards such themes, and despite my recognition of them, I still can't help but not really care that much. It is sad.

However, for people who are interested in this topic, this is a good resource, and thus as a text I recommend it. As just a book to read, for entertainment or pleasure, even for those who like their books with major social themes, it doesn't do much more than either reinforce what people who care already know or remind people who don't care that they don't care. I hate to be so crass about such things, but it's the nature of the beast, I suppose.

--PolarisDiB


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