Blood Done Sign My Name

Happy to say that after I asked for good books to read a few weeks back, I have some great suggestions to work on.  I was able to polish off a great book this week at the beach, “Blood Done Sign My Name” by Tim Tyson.

Blood Done is part memoir/ part history text about the real life murder of Henry Marrow, a black veteran, in 1970 Oxford, NC.  Tyson was a mere 11 year old Oxford resident when the murder (which occured in broad daylight) was committed - by Tyson’s neighbor.  The 300+ pages recount the events of 1970 - the murder, the resulting riots, the Klan, Tyson’s Methodist-minister would-be reconciliator dad, the shocking trial, and the general state of race relations in the supposedly desegregated South.

Tyson’s style is pure Southern storytelling at its best - he perfectly captures the heart (both good and bad) of the time through careful use of dialect and descriptions.  And while the drama of the events in Oxford serve as the backdrop of the book, Tyson is able to expertly leverage the events to talk about the history of civil rights in this country.

As a lifelong Southerner, I found it both fascinating and sickening to read about the reality that existed (almost quite literally) in my backyard in the not so distant past.  It’s astounding to think about the strides we’ve made as a culture to overcome such pervasive and blatant racism and bigotry in a mere 40 years.  And it’s quite overwhelmingly nauseating to think that such hatred and barbarism not only occured but was commonplace a mere 40 years ago.

In the Epilogue (which may be the most powerful part of the whole book), Tyson writes about the book as a form of blues - in doing so, he quotes Ralph Ellison who describes blues as:

“an impulse to keep the painful details and episodes of a brutal experience alive in one’s aching consciousness, to finger its jagged grain, and to transcend it, not by the consolation of philosophy but by squeezing from it a near-tragic,near-comic lyricism.  As a form, the blues is an autobiographical chronicle of personal catastrophe expressed lyrically.”

Tyson goes on to say that “this book is a kind of blues expression that urges us to confront our rage, contradictions, and failures, and the painful history of race in America.”

I couldn’t describe it any better - it’s a bittersweet song, but one which I think we all should take in, in hopes that someday we might not need to sing the blues.

If you want to read it, you can buy the book here.