Extremely pleased 2010-08-30

Reviewer: Darlene Knowlin

I received the item promptly and was in excellent condition. I would definitely use the seller in the future and recommend to others.

Compelling true story plus commentary on U.S. race relations 2010-07-20

Reviewer: M. Allen

The author, who is white, reflects on the history of race relations in the United States, drawing upon his own experience as the son of a United Methodist minister in the 1960s. The story centers on the killing of an unarmed black man by several white men in a small Southern town and the following murder trial. The author returned to the area as a college student to interview the participants in the incident on both sides of the color line. Those interviews, and his personal remembrances, are the basis of the story, which was written later in his life.

The most compelling parts of the book relate to the author's own experience and his interviews. However, he is a college professor who feels compelled to lecture the reader on race relations. Although some of this information is probably informative to younger people who did not live through this part of history, the writing tends to be preachy and judgmental in places. The author could have been more effective in expressing his views with a more restrained approach.

One of the most telling parts of the book is the reflection that, as a young white boy, he was taught that all are equal in the sight of God, but that living in an area where racism was everywhere was like a fish living in water. He absorbed the racism without really understanding it.

long way still to go 2010-07-13

Reviewer: moby pablo

Before I get to the book, a bit of background: To me (now 69), going up in Davidson North Carolina (1945-54), where my father was a minister and Professor?. I led a sheltered life.

The civil rights movement shaped my generation, shaped the peace movement and the feminist movement and the "green" movement. All these movements seemed to die away in the 80's and 90's and with the next generations....what went wrong? Was our struggle a century occurrence, a blip, a fluke, a cyclical thing? No, it was the shoulders on which the next "revolutionaries" (which we were not) could stand, it had not been in vain, despite the Republican and retrograde, capitalist, years to come. Marge Piercy has described the "standing on the shoulders" well in her novel on the French revolution- City of Light .

In his masterful book Blood Done Signed My Name (all book titles should be underlined), Tim Tyson states: "Most of the white people who appear in film footage of civil rights marches were brave followers of Leon Trotsky or radical Catholic sisters, saintly kooks of one description or another"- and these were exactly the directions my life would take, saintly or not. When I consider the happenings in Tim's North Carolina town of Oxford, as described in this book- along with Taylor Branch's 3 books on M L King, I believe Tim's to be the most important civil rights account since To Kill a Mockingbird. If my childhood was sheltered in Davidson, it is true that Tim only realized what really happened researching his book- not at the time it had happened.

But in the book he tells it like it is.

Tim on Eddie McCoy: one of the black leaders in Oxford at the time and after- McCoy ia dismissive of "outside agitators" when it comes to civil rights advances. He claims, "I didn't need that." (meaning the persons who came down from the north to help start a movement). No? Did blacks fight back as hard before the Freedom Riders? Why diss allies? Sounds like swagger to me- boastful, unneeded comments. Sure, it's foolish to extol the successes of the movement as only due to non violent civil disobediance when it was such events as the torching of tocacco and lumber warehouses in Oxford and the boycotts of white owned businesses that moved the whites along- yet and still.........as in the labor movement, militant destruction of property contributed a lot to the movement.

As Tim points out- a 38 special can also carry a lot of weight- not just the tactics of "non violent civil disobediance".

One of the black Viet vets that Tyson quotes says of Ben Chavis- a militant black organizer) that he "didn't know sh t! We didn't give a damn about his Martin Luther King bullsh t," and apparently it was the black Viet vets who burned down the big warehouses of tobacco and lumber in Oxford, after Marrow's murder and the aquittal of the murderers by an all white jury (are they still alive?)

Tyson writes, "the nation has comforted itself by sanitizing the civil rights movement, commemorating it as a civic celebration that no one ever opposed."

Note that Robert Teel's son (son of the acquitted murderer) has a web site trying to "set the record straight" and calling Tim a "race hustler". Tell me issues don't still exist in the Carolinas and the rest of the right wing south- land of the Repubublican's "southern strategy". America has yet to come to grips with the race issue. It occurs to me that Oxford, NC owes reparations- that this case should be re opened- as should many in the south. White racists who have gotten away w stuff whould be brought to justice- white jurors, white murderers.

I note that Tim was arrested protesting Wake Co school policies in 2010.

See the documentary on the Freedom Riders that came out in 2010.

To me the reviewer/critics of this book might acquit the murderers again- they still go free never forget. Defenders of the ole south ride the night in several of these reviews. As they nitpick thru the details, I challenge them- who did kill Marrow and why did they go unpunished and where are they now? Do they care about justice? Have they done anything for it or civil rights?

There are retrograde, armchair warriors with us still- right wingers mostly, or, just willing to overlook the facts and how progress is made in struggle. They oppose it still.

Can we just get over the whole "black" thing 2010-05-22

Reviewer: Dana C. Freeland

How many years are we going to beat this dead horse. Everyone acknowledges that black's were discriminated against, changes were made, and now we have a Black Village Idiot for president. What more can be done to appease black people. I for one don't plan to cut any slack for any race. This is America, you don't like it, leave it. If you can't write about uplifting, good, kind and generous black people who made a difference in someone's life, then don't write. Read the book "The Blind Side". Learn how black and white people have made a difference in each others lives in a good way.

Required Reading.... 2010-05-16

Reviewer: Christy Cricow

I was watching C-Span late one evening, and caught a Q&A with what seemed to be a Southern historian. At one point, a man in the audience posed a question....I can't remember what it was, but I was so struck by the eloquence and humanity of the questioner, that, when he was introduced as the author of Blood Done Sign My Name, I made a note of it and bought the book the next day.

I was not disappointed. Blood... is part fearless, compelling history and part graceful Southern literature. So well written, and profoundly important; the autobiographical elements are as engrossing as a Harper Lee novel, and the history is enlightening, and a view of race in the 1960s and 70s that is not commonly portrayed. I admire this book, but, more importantly, I really love it. It haunts me, a little, after one reading, and I need to read it again.

I highly recommend it.