Download Your Copy Blood Done Sign My Name: A True Story Compiled And Edited By Timothy B. Tyson Produced In EPub

the epilogue Tyson quotes Faulkner, "The past is not dead, It's not even past. " The quote sums up the importance of reading this book for me, It was devastating to read about the unjust and horrific treatment of human beings in our country, but as the author points outwe have to face our past if we want to move forward.
In this historical account there were people who stood up for the rights of others, In this there is hope, This book was absolutely engrossing, and a fantastically detailed, intimate look at civil rights in this country.
I can't recommend this one highly enough, I hung on his every word,

The audiobook is superb, for those who enjoy that sort of thing, This is a beautifully written and powerful if a bit meandering book, Read it for the story it's both important and instructive and for the interwoven family biography and especially for the routinely lyrical, uplifting writing.


Here's how wonderful the writing is: I was ordering the author's new book and just happened to see the strong reviews for this one and responded to the prompt to read a bit and see what it's like.
I couldn't stop reading, so moved was I by the beautiful, soaring prose, I ordered it and paid extra to have it delivered the next day and managed to finish it four nights later during a week in nwhich I worked overhours: it was so enthralling that, tired though I was, I read voraciously each night to finish it.


Now, it's not perfect: For example, some of the historical, contextual jaunts seem superfluous and/or too long, but all are informative.
Further, I can't help but think that the author is quite/overly charitable with respect to his family members who're also profiled in this book: it's not that he excuses their foibles, necessarily, just that sometimes he seems overly surprised and/or understanding of behaviors of which he may not be as forgiving with others or would seek more proof and take less on faith with respect to others.


This being said, I was often amazed by the lyrical turns of phrase that are ubiquitous in this book, reflecting both the unique cadence of the South and the author's prodigious gifts.
I want to share a few, but, honestly, there are so many, it's too hard to choose so I'll just grab the book and open it to a random page.


In this Black History Month, I'll share one example from the author's description of the reaction of many Americans to the assassination of the Rev.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He suggests that we were "mourning a loss so deep as to defy easy assessment, even at a distance of decades.
" As I read this, I realized that it perfectly described my stillconflicted feelings about this hero's demise.


OK, one more: in describing the country's experience at war, he notes "In the lates.
. . the Vietnam War made more and more corpses and less and less sense, "

Alright, the final one: in describing the world of White Supremacy in which he grew up, the author notes that it was "a society where white men made decisions and black women made dinners.
"

His turns of phrase can at times be as haunting as they are beautiful, which makes the meandering not only tolerable but often a gift of indelibly memorable imagery and prose.
In sum, you learn a lot about the tragedy of Henry Marrow's death, about the segregated society that produced and condoned it and about the coming of age of a family whose worldview rubbed against this uncomfortably.
. . all told vividly and beautifully, In a weird way, the elegance of the narrative obscures the horror of the central tragedy in this work, though it also exposes and indicts the White Supremacy of the time all too powerfully and horribly.


Read this book if you are interested in modern American History, Sociology and/or Biography.
If you are a student of the South and its folkways, grab a copy and devour it like the rich treat that it is.
And read it if you just flat out enjoy beautiful, lyrical writing, I cannot a recall a book that tells such a heinous story so incredibly as to make it such an enjoyable experience while not diminishing the tragedy that is its genesis and the lessons that we should learn therefrom.

This was nonfiction and I enjoyed this book, It is an in depth look at segregation, integration and the fight for civil rights, Timothy Tyson did a fantastic job with his research, assembling the info, and also I enjoyed his own personal experiences as well those of this family.
I actually liked that part the most because it felt more personal and gave this book that overall feel.
Sostars.

I really don't know a lot about the civil rights movement, All I know is that some nonviolent black guy named Martin Luther King, Jr, marched around and got attacked by cops, And black people wanted to stop discrimination i, e. the inability to drink out of whichever water fountain you want, which somehow, someday, just stopped, POOF!

Looking back at my description, though, I can see all the holes in my knowledge.
I know that just one guy couldn't have changed the country so drastically, I know that discrimination has to be more than just dividing water fountains, buses, and schools by color or it wouldn't have been such a big problem.
I know that we didn't all just decide to hold hands and sing "Kumbaya" one afternoon, and suddenly discrimination disappeared.
I have heard obscure names like Malcolm X and the Black Panthers tossed around a few times, but I have no idea what they mean.
All I've learned about the civil rights movement is the child's sanitized version of history, just the information that you find in a children's book about MLK and no more.


And chances are, if you're young, like me, and white, like me, that's all you've ever learned, too.


That's where

this book comes in, Set in Oxford, North Carolina during an especially turbulent period of the civil rights movement, Blood Done Sign My Name recounts the story of a white family killing a black man, and the racial tension that resulted.
I never knew that there was rioting and firebombing all over that small country town, or even anywhere in the country, and especially that it was done by the black community.
I never really knew what the Black Panthers stood for, or why people were so upset when those two black Olympic medalists gave the "black power" salute during the national anthem.
I still don't know what Malcolm X stood for, but now I have to know, This book has opened my eyes on the civil rights issue so much, and I can't hardly believe that our country was once like that.
This makes Occupy Wall Street and all the backlash there seem like kindergarten, and Middle Eastern terrorists seem like background noise.


What has our country been hiding from us Obviously, more than I thought.
I knew history textbooks couldn't be entirely trusted, but I didn't know to what extent, Now I feel I have to go researching everything supposedly important in history that I don't know hardly anything aboutVietnam, Nixon, the Persian Gulf, Cubaand see what exactly was going on, and what we're too ashamed to teach our children.
As Tyson explains in the book, we can't move forward until we acknowledge where we've been, And from what I see, we're just trying to hide that information, Blood Done Sign My Name is a superb story by a superb author, I would most definitely recommend it to anyone seeking to further their knowledge of civil rights history sadly and as the author points out just because back in thes amps Congress passed civil rights bills doesn't mean that these were ever fully implemented or accepted.
In Tyson's book, he tells of an incident that took place in North Carolina as late as, and I'm sure that the longstanding prejudices continue to foster ugly incidents into the present.
So if you are interested in this topic, pick up this book,

brief synopsis my impressions

"sitelinkBlood Done Sign My Name," as the author notes on pageof this book, "started out as a slave spiritual.
After the fall of the Confederacy it emerged as a paradoxical blues lament, . . " then "evolved into a gospel song," then in thes sung by a group called The Radio Four, "elevates the transcendent spirit of gospel, but," notes the author, "listen closely and you can hear Chuck Berry down the line.
" Like the evolution of that song, the author's "hopes for this country have taken a similar trajectory," and his "ascendant spirits, like the future of our country, depend upon an honest confrontation with our own history.
"

This book is not just another retelling of the stories of the civil rights movement.
. . it starts in, actually, when two boys one of them the author are playing basketball and the other boy says to the author "Daddy and Roger and 'em shot a nigger.
"Both boys were ten, living in Oxford NC it was this incident which was the spark that set off the fire of unrest amp violence in this small town the book describes how the acts from both sides of the color line affected him, his family and the other members of this small town.
While he keeps this story as the focal point of the book, he goes on to tell of his own roots, and his personal experiences during the volatiles during the time of Watergate, the Vietnam War up through the present when he took a group of students on a tour of the South.
His story is fascinating amp compelling I couldn't put it down,

To be truthful, at first I wondered where all of this story about his family was going amp why put it alongside a story about a terrible injustice.
But eventually, it all ties together the story could not have been done as well as it was without it.


I totally enjoyed the book and I'm going to get the author's other book now.
Please do yourself a favor amp read this book!
Tyson's opus is intelligently written and meticulously researched and looks at all characters in a sympathetic light, no matter how evil they appear to be on the surface.
Tyson's biggest weakness in his book is his ambivalence of his own identity, He begins the book as an individual proud of his strong father and southern roots as they appear to be a dominant force in who he is today.
. . however he oscillates between patontheback goodole southern boy and self loathing southerner, wishing to enlighten these backwards and ignorant people I'm from Kentucky, tongue was in cheek on that one.
While I found this book to be heartwrenching and wellwritten, his refusal to take a stand on who he is really, really annoyed me.


Favorite quotes:

" 'I really dig sharks,' the poet once said, 'because when they bite your goddamn head off, they never say it was for a good cause' "

"Though people tend to think of poor, rural white Southerners as the worst racists in the country, these were not the people who redlined black folks out of their neighborhoods, the way northern bankers and real estate agents did.
They were hardly in a position to keep blacks out of America's most elite schools, the way northeastern academics did.
And white country people in the South often lived right alongside blacks, in similar material conditions, which both softened and sharpened racial clashes.
" “Daddy and Roger and em shot em a n, ” Thats whatyearold Timothy B, Tysons friend Gerald told him as they were bouncing a basketball in the driveway in Oxford, North Carolina in.
That murder and the events that unfolded afterward would haunt Tyson in the years that followed,

This is a powerful true story, I just read the epilogue through a second time and will probably read it again, In a sense, the author says this book is a story of the blues and a story of the gospel, both of which started as southern things but speak to the whole human dilemma.
“The blues are about looking a painful history straight in the eye the gospel is about coming together as a community of faith in order to rise beyond that anguish.
If anyone wonders why a white boy from eastern North Carolina teaches black history in Wisconsin, the timeless wisdom of the blues has one answer.
”

Tyson says that as a nation and as individual human beings, we would rather hear gospel stories.
We cherish those stories because we want to transcend our history without actually confronting it, But the future of our country depends upon an honest confrontation with our own history, The murder of Henry Marrow in Oxford, NC, the assassination of Dr, King and the loss of those whom the slave poets called “the many thousands gone” cannot be erased, and they must not be forgotten.
But, Tyson says, that blood has the power to redeem our history if we name it and heed the call of justice that still waits for an answer.
.