Blood Done Sign My Name Analysis

Timothy B. Tyson wrote this autobiography while he was a professor of African American studies at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. The book was published in May of 2004, but was based on true events happening in 1970. Blood Done Sign My Name revolves around a young African American man named Henry Marrow, who served in the Vietnam war, being shot and killed in his hometown neighborhood because he flirted with a white woman. Tyson was just a boy that lived in Oxford, North Carolina when this tragic event happened. Tyson’s friend Gerald said to him, “Daddy and Roger and ‘em shot ‘em a nigger”, a statement that will probably stick with him forever. Tyson’s father, Vernon, who was known as the minister at the Methodist church, did not allow the word “nigger” to be said inside of their home. Vernon firmly believed that all people were God’s children and race was not and should not be an issue to us people if it was not an issue in the Bible.

Slavery was abolished after the Civil War, but the Negro race still was not accepted as equals into American society. To attain a better understanding of the events and struggles faced during this period, one must take a look at its' literature. James Weldon Johnson does an excellent job of vividly depicting an accurate portrait of the adversities faced before the Civil Rights Movement by the black community in his novel “The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man.” One does not only read this book, but instead one takes a journey alongside a burdened mulatto man as he struggles to claim one race as his own.

In Congressman, Robert H. Clancy’s speech An “Un-American Bill”: A Congressman Denounces Immigration Quotes addresses racial discrimination in America. Clancy’s purpose is to inform people of the truth in immigration laws. Using a profound tone, Clancy conveys Americans not seeing the truth about certain acts and laws in America. Clancy supports his argument of racial discrimination towards immigrants in America in the Johnson-Reed Act by using personal experience, appealing to the reader's emotions by telling heart-wrenching stories, and having factual evidence.

America’s history is overrun with oppression and injustice based on race, ethnicity, and other traits that innocent victims have no control over. As a result, the reputation of the United States is forever tainted by it’s dark past, and still practices these surviving habits of hatred. Civil liberty issues faced since the establishment of the country have yet to be resolved because of the ever-present mistreatment, corruption in positions of authority, and the dehumanization of minorities.

Why do we hate? Why do we lie? Why do we forget? Three questions provide a strong explanation of how African Americans were treated, whether it was the use of verbal or physical abuse. These questions also describes how African Americans were implied into education. Authors wrote many issues regarding the ignorance and abolishment of slavery in more of a “Whites” perspective to teach the American society what they want to hear and not what actually happened. And further more, forgotten sources. Some want to forget was has happened over the course of our time, some want to hide the truth of how this has affected society and the race around us. Three documents were discussed with hidden facts and deep recognition of what is the truth behind

Simplicity is forsaken. Stereotypes are removed. And history materializes as a stirring call for reaction. Timothy B. Tyson confronts readers with a stunning reversal and revisal of the common memoirs devoted to civil rights in his book, Blood Done Sign My Name. Although Tyson’s perspective appears to support the violent strategies employed by frustrated activists, his chronicle of commonplace dialogue, murder, and reconciliation can be used as a supplementary lens of understanding through which to see history. With this revitalized view of entrenched paternalism, hypothetical versus tangible equality, and the volatility of religious and civic leadership in times of transformation, Tyson’s audience can uncover new perceptions. Understanding the sensitivities and opinions of participants of the Civil Rights movement brings reality to an often-impenetrable realm of the past.

Timothy B. Tyson, born 1959, had a unique childhood as the son of a Methodist minister who supported the civil rights movement. He accepted his parents’ liberal attitude, and struggled to reconcile it with the society around him – that of white supremacy and black oppression. Later, he attended the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and Emory University for his BA, and returned to Duke University to earn his PhD in history. He began his teaching career with US History while attending Duke, then switched to Afro-American Studies in 1994. Based on Tyson’s parenting and field of study, it can be expected to be a solid narrative that, while containing signs of white privilege, gives insight into how people can rise from oppression.

The national narrative of transformation depicted in the appended PowerPoint presentation purports to explain African American's longwinded struggle for voting rights. The story begins with a newspaper advertisement of black slaves for purchase. The advertisement perpetuates the ubiquitously presumed value of black people as commodities which consecutively invalidates black people’s value as human beings. Considering black people’s undervalued reputation, they were not appreciated as citizens of the United States until 1866. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 marked the beginning of transformation, as all native-born Americans including blacks were given the rights to citizenship.

Let’s examine the reality of violence during the Reconstruction Era. In the document, “Southern Horrors- Lynch Laws in All its Phases, by Ida B. Wells-Barnett we see countless examples of the continued violence in the south against African-Americans. The slogan “This is white man’s country and the

In her Fire in a Canebrake, Laura Wexler describes an important event in mid-twentieth century American race relations, long ago relegated to the closet of American consciousness. In so doing, Wexler not only skillfully describes the event—the Moore’s Ford lynching of 1946—but incorporates it into our understanding of the present world and past by retaining the complexities of doubt and deception that surrounded the event when it occurred, and which still confound it in historical records. By skillfully navigating these currents of deceit, too, Wexler is not only able to portray them to the reader in full form, but also historicize this muddled record in the context of certain larger historical truths. In this fashion, and by refusing to

This question is important because it first reveals how American cities “simmered with hatred, deeply divided as always…. Time and again in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, urban white proved themselves capable of savagery toward their black neighbors…” (6). Unless documented in novels such as Arc of Justice, the deep racism and brutal mistreatment of black people in the past may fade away from memory. The question is also important because it explains how “the Sweet case did help move America away from the brutal intolerance of the

From the moment Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, the United States of America established itself as a nation built upon the foundation of equality. In the legendary document, Jefferson proclaimed, “all men... are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights... life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (Declaration).” Contradictorily, when the separatists fled England for an auspicious future in North America, their treatment of the Native American and Spanish occupants was inhumane, barbaric, and not becoming of a civilization ingrained with the principles of equality. Moreover, the pioneers of the “free” world marginalized, ostracized, and chimerically represented the African race more than any other minority. Paradoxically dubbed the “man of the people”, Thomas Jefferson illuminated his true interpretation of equality in Notes on the State of Virginia. “We have had under our eyes the races of black and of red men, they have never yet been viewed by us as subjects of natural history,” he wrote. “I advance it... that the blacks... are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind (history).” Despite what the media conveys, this belief system lingered and particularly exists in the Department of Justice. For years, our government controlled the amount of accessible, viable, and financially rewarding opportunities for impoverished African Americans through the surreptitious agendas of law enforcement. However, Los Angeles

In a land where we are not created as equals; aid, education, justice, and opportunity for the masses of minorities is not evenly distributed throughout society. The only institution minorities have better access to than their white counterparts are, in fact, the penal system. In the ongoing struggle for equal rights, equality continues to elude the those who fight and those who do nothing as the institutions redistrict neighborhoods in an attempt to control another institution; the electoral college, to control yet another institution; the executive branch. New York State Senator William L. Marcy coined a phrase in 1828 “To the victor belongs the spoils”.

The United States has a longstanding history of racism and discriminatory policy, stemming from the colonial era. Generally, those who weren’t considered true White Americans faced blatant ethnicity-based discrimination and adversity in matters of education, human rights, immigration, land ownership, and politics. Specific racial institutions, characteristic of the 17th to 20th centuries, included slavery, wars against the Native Americans, exclusion from civil life, and segregation. It wasn’t until the mid-20th century that formal racial discrimination was banned, and majority attitudes began to see racism as socially unacceptable. However, our relatively recent racialized history has left an unfortunate impact on present society. The legacy of historical racism still continues to be echoed through socioeconomic inequality, and racial politics still remain a major phenomenon. Many argue that our government systems have shifted from means of overt racism to more symbolic, covert racism, and that this is reflected in our societal institutions, such as employment, housing, education, economics, and government.

There have been many cases of social injustice on a number of occasions in the expansive history of the United States. The oppressions of the early movements for women’s suffrage and the relocation and encampment of Native Americans are two of many occurrences. Around the middle of the 20th century, a movement for equality and civil liberties for African Americans among citizens began. In this essay, Notes of a Native son James Baldwin, a black man living in this time, recalls experiences from within the heart of said movement. Baldwin conveys a sense of immediacy throughout his passage by making his writing approachable and estimating an enormous amount of ethos.