For the sake of being frank, I have struggled with how I wanted to review this book, so...I'll just jump in and do my best to make it cohesive. I have a personal connection to Oxford, North Carolina as a whistle stop on the grand tour of my life thus far. I stopped in Oxford to buy a belt on my way to an interview, then when I needed a place still in North Carolina (to keep my instate tuition at UNC-Greensboro) but close enough to my job..Oxford was where I landed. When I first found this book, I wasn't surprised at what happened. Every town has a few skeletons in the closet. However, within this book I found a connection to a place I knew as a sleepy little town with a good brewery and cutesy shops.
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| BLM March in Oxford, NC |
I moved to Oxford, NC in the late summer (in North Carolina that extends to the end of September) of 2018, while I was working on the other side of the VA/NC line. When looking at places to rent, the real estate agent I happened to use did refer to my house as "On the good side of town" but I took that with a grain of salt. Every place has its "good" and "bad" sides of the tracks, though I was less worried about where my place was, as long as it was affordable. I now have a better understanding of what that meant. It meant it was in a "white" part of town. The few friends I did make while there were shocked I would take off for a walk though the streets (day or night) of various parts of town and not think anything about it. Unbeknownst to me, I was walking through rough neighborhoods. Another real issue I noticed was the Sons Of Confederate Monument on the grounds of the public library where I would write my Master's thesis on Sunday afternoons. Being this Civil War buff I was, I didn't think much of it on one side of the coin. I had read about the Granville Greys and understand the history (I think better than most) On the other, as a public librarian, I damn sure wouldn't want that crap on the grounds of my library. After all, people of every race used the library, came to community meetings in the library, and in fact voted there as well. Then the summer of 2020 happened. I saw the news and read the papers out of Raleigh. Downtown was on fire and urged my friend there that if they needed to, they could head to Oxford as an escape if things got totally out of hand. Once I got back to work, and Oxford (I refugeed in Tennessee with my family), I took part of BLM marches in Oxford that took ended on the courthouse steps. We sang hymns, people held signs, and things were nonviolent. I was there, as a white guy, so I knew my place was not at the front, but in the back as support. Anything more might have seemed disingenuous.
Blood Done Sign My Name had been on my reading since I found it at the New Bern Public Library, I must admit AFTER I left Oxford. To say it reversed my perspective on Oxford is an overstatement, but it gave me a greater context to the march I took part in, and some of the things I saw and heard in my time there. Some I took notice, other's rolled off. As Tyson points out, the south is complex and those of us who live here sometimes have to face things with a shrug or a shaken head of disapproval. Like his father, I heard things and saw things I did not approve of, but had to walk the fine line of living with people who held and voiced opinions different than mine. Unlike Tyson's father, I didn't take as strong a stand as I should have. While I did march with history to the courthouse steps, I went home and on to work the next day. While I let myself off the hook by promoting a variety of materials in my library, reaching out for new voices in my own reading, and striving to make sure all voices are heard, it sometimes pales in comparison to the work others like those mentioned in this book.
Tyson's book is a lesson in John Wesley's credo "Do what you can, With what you have, Where you are." The 1970 murder of a black man in Oxford, NC was not the first, or sadly the last time we have had to face the music that nearly half our population has a very different history than the other. Still we are called to do, and doing can be as simple as a march with your black neighbors or reading a book that opens up a locked door about the place you live. I have this book to thank as a fantastic history of an event I knew nothing about, in a place that I saw as flawed but over all decent, and a glimpse into a family who lived out their faith as they could in trying times.
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