Blood Done Signed My Name
By Timothy B. Tyson

The very first sentence will hook you into reading this book. “Daddy and Roger and ‘em shot ‘em a nigger.” I found this to be a very interesting book. It brought back many memories, of what was going on during the Civil Rights issues in the 1960’s. The theme of the book is about what went on in Oxford N.C. after a black man was killed by a white family. The town erupted when the blacks thought that justice was not done. Marches, firebombing of businesses and riots prevailed . The author spent many years, researching records, trying to understand the history of this era.

As I read, I recognized many familiar names and places. Although I didn’t remember all that went on at Oxford I kept thinking that the same things (marching, school bomb threats, fear, and anger) were going on in my own little home town.

Timothy B. Tyson is a professor of Afro-American studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He believes most of the information he found in papers and public records of the time were slanted toward the white man’s point of view. He interviewed many black people from Oxford to get their perspective. Mr. Tyson thinks we have been lied to all through out history because both races were taught that “Whites” were superior.