Blood Done Sign My Name
| Author | Timothy Tyson |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Autobiography; historical non-fiction |
| Publisher | Crown |
|
Publication date
|
May 18, 2004 |
| Media type | Print (hardcover & paperback) |
| Pages | 368 |
| ISBN | (hardcover) |
| OCLC | 53019249 |
| 975.6/535/00496073 22 | |
| LC Class | F264.O95 T97 2004 |
Blood Done Sign My Name is an autobiographical work of history written by Timothy B. Tyson while he was a professor of Afro-American studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. The book, published in 2004 and based in part on a Master of Arts thesis Tyson wrote in 1990, while attending Emory University, deals with the 1970 murder of Henry Marrow, a black man.
Since 2004, the book has sold 140,000 copies and earned awards including the University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Religion. UNC-CH selected the book for its 2005 summer reading program.It was adapted as a movie by the same name, released in 2010.
The book deals with the 1970 killing by whites of Henry Marrow, a 23-year-old black Vietnam War veteran in Oxford, North Carolina. The murder, and acquittal of two suspects by an all-white jury, resulted in arson and other violence. Blacks organized to conduct an 18-month boycott of white businesses in the mostly segregated town, to force change in public facilities. The case helped galvanize the African-American civil rights activities in Oxford and across the eastern North Carolina black belt.
Local civil rights activist Ben Chavis took a lead role in the Civil Rights Movement; he led the march to the capital and boycott of businesses. This episode radicalized the African-American freedom struggle in North Carolina. Racial conflict in Wilmington, North Carolina resulted in the burning of a grocery store; the Wilmington Ten cases resulted from charges against Ben Chavis and nine other black men in this incident, several of whom were convicted and imprisoned to long terms. They were eventually freed on an appeal; in the 1990s Chavis became the youngest ever executive director of the NAACP and later an organizer of the Million Man March.
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