Blood Done Sign My Name Read online

  In more recent years, I have been fortunate to pursue my labors as a historian alongside people such as Curtis Austin, Anthony Badger, Marcellus Barksdale, Beth Bates, Charles Bolton, Julian Bond, Tim Borstelmann, Taylor Branch, Dorothy Burlage, Clayborne Carson, David Carter, Jeffrey Crow, Connie Curry, Jane Dailey, Pete Daniel, Mary Dudziak, John Egerton, Glenn T. Eskew, William McKee Evans, Adam Fairclough, Elizabeth Fenn, Kari Frederickson, David Garrow, Thavolia Glymph, van Gosse, Vincent Harding, Nancy Hewitt, Lance Hill, Darlene Clark Hine, Wesley Hogan, Gerald Horne, Kenneth Janken, Will Jones, Peniel Joseph, Sudershan Kapur, Tracy K’Meyer, Steven Lawson, Chana Kai Lee, Andrew Manis, Neil McMillen, Mark Naison, Sydney Nathans, Kenneth O’Reilly, Nell Painter, Jonathan Prude, Barbara Ransby, James Roark, Bryant Simon, Harvard Sitkoff, Patricia Sullivan, Jean Theoharis, Brian Ward, Rhonda Williams, Peter Wood, Komozi Woodard, Howard Zinn, and a full crew of other able and generous scholars, many of whom are busily redefining “ the civil rights movement, ” pointing out that the familiar saga from Montgomery to Memphis was only the most visible culmination of a much larger and more complex story. We are far from done.

  The place where I try to do my small part, the Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, is one of those rare institutions that almost works. On the fourth floor of Helen C. White Hall, I have found a warm place on the frozen prairies. Among my fine colleagues, Henry Drewal, Stanlie James, Nellie McKay, Richard Ralston, and William van Deburg have been especially helpful to me. Jeannie Comstock and Trina Messer remain my guardian angels. I can’t even talk about Christina Greene.

  Years before I was exiled to the tundra, I found a warm quilt of love and friendship without which I cannot complete a sentence, let alone a book. Glenda Gilmore, in addition to being the Queen, gave me love and wisdom, always straight up. Blood brothers Nick Biddle and Herman Bennett and I may have acted like kindergarteners, but even our critics must concede that we played well with others. And I am also grateful to Herman for letting me tell his family’s story, even though it was a painful one. Danielle McGuire, sturdy as a tree, worked hard to help me and helped me to work hard, and I will always be proud of her. Rob Shaffer’s reading of the first drafts was invaluable, and made up for those toxic waste socks. Katherine Charron, Kirsten Fischer, Christina Greene, Rhonda Lee, Jennifer Morgan, and Adriane Smith have constantly reminded me of the purpose of literature, and they all read the manuscript for me, too, and offered helpful insights and loving friendship. Lane Windham always knew why I did this in the first place. So did Dave Marsh, and he told half the world, too. Robert and Mabel Williams taught me more than words can say and, though Robert has passed on, Mabel continues to warm my heart. Nan Enstad edited an early draft and her confidence inoculated me against writer’s block. Don Baylor remains the king of gumbo, his skill at the grill surpassed only by his bountiful spirit. Paula McLain sang like nobody’s business and gave me matchless editing help, too. David LaCroix read this entire manuscript in the early stages and gave me useful criticism and warm encouragement. Buddies like Deborah Baldwin, John Ferrick, Melody Ivins, Marie Kohler, Tom Loeser, Kathy Nasstrom, and Kim Vergeront read this work early on and gave me timely advice. David Ikard, a brilliant writer and scholar, read this whole book and saved me from at least part of my own ignorance. Peggy Vergeront gave me a crucial critique, to say nothing of her good company. James Danky, a sparkling soul and a smart reader, keeps me laughing all the way to the gallows. Judy Kantrowitz gave the manuscript a thoughtful polish, practically overnight. And I can’t overlook the kindness of Leslie Brown, Shirley S. Portwood, and Annie Vaulk, the infamous “Strawberry Ice Cream Gang,” in reading the manuscript for me.

  Though I confess to being a mind-numbing geek, it is not necessary to edit my work to earn my gratitude. Barbara Forrest, the Beauty Queen of the east side, and Suzanne Desan, a one-woman Tour de France, lavished me with chicken enchiladas and many other comforts of home. Nina Hasen remains a peach. Lorrie Moore provided sage advice and sang with me. Jerry Noack is working on a building for the Lord. Cynthia Dubin was rooting for me all along. Linda Gordon did me the matchless favor of introducing me to Charlotte Sheedy, for which I will always be grateful. Bethany Moreton brought me meat-loaf and greens. Mary Ellen Curtin, Jess and Kathy Gilbert, Ben Kiernan, Patty Kohlman, Beth Loveland, George Loveland, Lynn Loveland, Bill and Bobbie Malone, Kim Miller and Bryan Trabold and now little Gabriel gave me great good cheer. My neighbor Win Eide has kept my spirits up with her good company and my weight up with her cakes and sandwiches. Thanks to Ian Lekus, cheerful comrade, for the author photograph. I know that Howard Wolfson and Hugo Lindgren have no game, but the world seems to think so, and I am proud of them anyway. Col. David Johnson and his bride, the keen and lovely Wendy Frieman, gave me heart and hospitality. Colonel Johnson is a great American, a fine scholar, and a dear friend—thanks for the ride, Dave. Charles Gaddy, who sang to me when I was a boy and told me great stories, has been a constant source of support.

  My compadres in Bookclub Number 6—Dick Cates, Andy Cohn, John Frey, Steve Kantrowitz, Tom Leiterman, Stewart Prager, Tim Size, and Michael Weiden—endured my endless blathering on about this book, and then read the manuscript for me. I cherish their company and counsel, and I thank them from the bottom of my heart, which Dr. Frey assures us remains in fine condition, thanks to my consumption of smoked pork, dark beer, red wine, and other health and beauty aids.

  My students at Duke University and at the University of Wisconsin–Madison have provided a bottomless fountain of purpose and meaning for my work. Alison Stocking signed on as a sister. Charles Hughes is a dangerous man and must be stopped. Joe Fronczak has a job to do, and he does it well. Katie Givens, the budding spiritual leadership of Idaho and Manhattan, will lead us in prayer. (I am grateful to her mama, too.) And Rhea Lathan is a one-woman gospel choir. I missed Thaddeus Bower when he moved to New York, where he told his boss at Crown to ask me to write a book, for which I am indebted to him. As for my other debts, I cannot list fully here even the students who have helped me with this project, let alone those who have given me joy and purpose. But to permit a small constellation of names to stand for a vast, starlit sky, I am grateful to John Adams, Shanna Benjamin, Elise Bittrich, vanessa Bliss, Britt Bjornson, Joe Cavise, Marjorie Cook, Matt Danky, Katie De Bruin, Jerome Dotson, Ben Doherty, Jay Driskell, Gwen Drury, Jon Effron, Jessica Engel, Steve Furrer, Amanda Gengler, David Gilbert, Dan Ginger, Benedikt Glatz, Heather Goodwin, Michelle Gordon, Brenna Greer, Molly Grosse, Heather Guenther, Phyllis Hill, Helen Hoguet, Jo Hunt, Patrick Jones, Kate Jorgenson, Lexie Kasdan, Elizabeth Keeney, Princess Kent, Matt Levin, Jennifer Olsen Mandel, Story Matkin-Rawn (and her mama and daddy), Holly McGee, Trina Mikonowitz, Leah Mirakor, Josh Moise, Jim Neighbors, Zoe Van Orsdol, Heather Peto, Julie Posselt, Mia Reddy, Jacob Schultz, vanessa Solis, Tyina Steptoe, Jake Strand, Eduardo C. Sundaram, Megan vail, Neelum Wadhwani, Simon Wendt, Stephanie Westcott, Lisa Woolfork, Melvina Johnson Young, and the students of Afro-American Studies 231, 272, 302, and 671 who endured my stories and sharpened my sensibilities.

  I am also grateful to students in the Afro-American Studies Department at Yale University, the Folklore and History departments at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University for reading parts of this book and engaging me in helpful discussions. Martha Bouyer at Body of Christ Deliverance Ministry in Birmingham and Joanne Bland at the National voting Rights Museum in Selma were generous hosts who became fast friends. I also want to thank Leslee Gilbert and the students at St. Mary’s College of Southern Minnesota, Ed Pavlic and the folks at Union College in Schenectady, New York, and the students at Welcome Middle School in Greenville, North Carolina, and the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics in Durham for receiving these stories so warmly. I am also grateful to Emily Auerbach and Norman Gilliland of Wisconsin Public Radio’s “University of the Air” for letting me yammer on to their listeners.
/>   A special word of appreciation is necessary for my former colleagues at Manuel’s Tavern and the Euclid Avenue Yacht Club, two world-class watering holes in Atlanta, Georgia. Wisely or unwisely, they believed in me at a time when more sober and less discerning judges sometimes did not. When I was getting ready to drop out of graduate school, they got on their motorcycles and drove all the way to North Carolina to see that I did not. They threatened to kick my ass but I am pretty sure they would not have done it. A hearty shout goes out to Don Sweet, whatever star the Lord has let him ride into glory, and to Hippy, Michelle, Fay Lynn, Shawn, Big Jeff, ol’ Pete, Curtis, and all the gang. Part of me will always stand behind the bar, right beneath William James: “Sobriety divides, discriminates, and says no; drunkenness unites, affirms, and says yes. Not through mere perversity do men run after it.”

  I began telling this story in the spring of 2001, when I was supposed to be doing something else, naturally. In this context, I should thank the Institute for Research in Humanities at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, which gave me that spring semester off, even though (actually, because ) I promised to write something quite different. Tom Rankin at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke sheltered me for a crucial week of writing and editing. I am also grateful to the staffs of Perkins Library at Duke, the Wisconsin State Historical Society, the North Carolina Division of Archives and History in Raleigh, and the Richard H. Thornton Library in Oxford, North Carolina.

  Many people in the book publishing business have been a great help to me. David Perry and Kate Torrey at the University of North Carolina Press have been steadfast friends and trusted advisers. Tom Campbell at the Regulator Bookshop in Durham, North Carolina, my home-court bookseller, gave me solid guidance. Allen Ruff at Rainbow Bookstore Cooperative in Madison, Wisconsin, is a mensch. At Crown Publishers, Steve Ross and Chris Jackson placed their chips on the book, and made it happen. Emily Loose, with her strong narrative sense, worked wonders as editor before she moved on. And Doug Pepper, the final editor, won the heavyweight title with his deft advocacy and dazzling literary judgment. Thanks also to Genoveva Llosa, Amy Boorstein, Alison Forner, copyeditor Bonnie Thompson, Lauren Dong, and Laura Duffy for their fine work.

  Above all, I want to thank my agent, the wise and beautiful Charlotte Sheedy, who defended the author against all enemies, foreign and domestic, even when the enemy was the author himself. I can never repay her many kindnesses and her sage counsel. And I would not play poker with her if I were you—don’t say I didn’t warn you.

  As ever, I drew my deepest strength from family. My grandmother, Jessie Buie, died before any of my books were published, and she is probably too busy managing her proper portion of the Hereafter to read them now, but I will always love her. My uncle, Charles Buie, told me important stories. All of the Buies loved me long and hard, for which I am grateful, and listened to my stories, which was above and beyond the call of duty. Likewise all the Tysons have blessed me with love and support. Special thanks to the late Pauline Pearce, the late Dewey Tyson, the late Tommy Tyson, Earl Tyson, and Bobby Tyson for sharing family stories and being supportive over the years. I am also particularly grateful to Cheryl Tyson and Thomas Earl Tyson for their tenderness.

  And the Morgans of Corapeake, all twenty-two of them, redefine the traditional connotations of the phrase “in-laws.” Our bountiful matriarch, D. Morgan, has nurtured me like her own. Sam Morgan has been a steady rock. Susan Evans won a special place in my heart years ago, which only grew larger when she spent endless hours taking photographs for this book; I am obliged to write another one, if only to furnish a home for the cover shot she will get one day. Jason Morgan Ward sets a sterling example as a scholar, and I am grateful to his parents, Mike and Hope, for their assistance and support. As for Brooke, we’ll always have Barcelona. Phil, Tom, and Leigh Morgan read parts of this manuscript, and I did find that list of typographical errors, thanks, Leigh.

  My brother Vern, whom I shared a room with for many years, is a lovely man, aside from his personal habits. I want to thank him for his friendship and support, and for taking the blame for that beer Daddy found in the downstairs freezer in 1975. My deep thanks to Jessie Katherine and Thomas Tyson, two of the most important people for whom I wrote this book. Thanks to Terri, too, for greatly increasing the median IQ and personal appearance of our family. Boo, the latest Tyson to graduate from divinity school, fights for justice and mercy in Alabama, and has her own story to tell, which makes me proud. She and Lori Messinger, sister-outlaw #1, have stood by me for many years, enduring my incessant stories, and I am forever grateful. Julie Tyson, my brown-eyed soul sister, has been an angel to me and a light to the world, and I thank her from the bottom of my heart. Long live the sisteren.

  My children have been perhaps the biggest blessing of my life. Samuel Hart Tyson, who has already won several games in Cameron Indoor Stadium, played hoop with me, comforted me whether Duke lost or won, made me laugh a thousand times, jumped off cliffs into cold water with me, and inspired me with his zesty embrace of the world. Hope Tyson, as noted earlier, read the manuscript in its first incarnation, and has furnished a fine example for her father by her laughter, love, and the way she makes something beautiful and useful every day. And she’s brave, too, not to mention an accomplished writer herself. I love them both always.

  The mother of these angels, Perri Anne Morgan, is a brilliant woman whose one large blind spot it has been my privilege to occupy for twenty years. I am sorry for all that this book has cost her, and I will try to make it up to her. I am grateful for her patient help, luminous editing, and all the years of love and friendship. Perri stitched my life together by turning our house into a juke joint—no need to choose between gospel and blues when sweet mama is at the old upright. The thrill is definitely not gone.

  When I was only three years old, Mama found me on the floor with a book pulled tightly against my face, sobbing hard. When she asked me why on earth I was crying, I told her, “Because I can’t get in the book.” Now, I could not read at that age. What had happened, really, is that my mother had read so many books to me, so vividly, so beautifully, that I expected to be able to pick up the book and plunge instantly into beautiful depths of the imagination, and was disappointed that I could not. In later years, of course, I found exactly that kind of satisfaction in books, and I owe all that to Mama. Martha Buie Tyson stands like a tree beside the river of our lives, giving shade and sustenance, and teaching all of us by example. I am also grateful to her for sharing her diary, answering my endless questions, and letting me write about her family.

  My father, who remains the best damn preacher who ever beat on the Book, graced my life with his passion for the word and his vision of redeeming love. Like Jacob, he has wrestled with the angels and come away walking with a limp, but he carries that vision without which the people perish. And even if he didn’t, he has been the best father anyone ever had. And even if he hadn’t, he has become a friend like no other, reading every draft of every sentence I ever wrote, serving as a library of eastern North Carolina lore, going with me to archives and interviews, offering excellent editorial suggestions, giving me his love and my liberty, to say nothing of lunch. This book is dedicated to Martha and Vernon, my mama and daddy, with undying gratitude for their courage and their vision and their love.

  NOTES ON SOURCES

  My most important sources, aside from our family’s memories and diaries, are the criminal court records from the Granville County courthouse and the Francis B. Hays Collection at the Richard H. Thornton Library, both in Oxford, North Carolina; the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Papers at the Library of Congress in Washington; the Governor J. Melville Broughton Papers, the Governor R. Gregg Cherry Papers, the Governor Kerr Scott Papers, the Governor Terry Sanford Papers, and the Governor Robert Scott Papers, all at the North Carolina Division of Archives and History in Raleigh; the James Edward McCoy Papers and the Jonathan Daniels Papers at the Southern Historic
al Collection in Wilson Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; the James William Cole Papers at the East Carolina Manuscript Collection at the J. Y. Joyner Library at East Carolina University in Greenville; the Raleigh News and Observer and the Oxford Public Ledger, although I also used a number of other newspapers as listed below; and my own interviews with participants and observers of the events in this book. As noted in chapter 12, the Oxford Public Ledger is missing for this entire historical period, but I was able to retrieve several key issues from criminal records 70-CR-1847 and 70-CR-1849 at the Granville County courthouse. Below, scholars and readers can trace specific sources by chapter. Eventually, all of my research materials, including transcripts of the interviews, will be housed in the James Edward McCoy Papers.

  CHAPTER ONE: BAPTISM

  My sources for the riot in Oxford the night I heard about Henry Marrow’s death are State Highway Patrol Civil Intelligence Bulletin, May 13, 1970; North Carolina Good Neighbor Council report, May 12, 1970; State Bureau of Investigation Civil Intelligence Bulletin, May 13, 1970; and Western Union telegram from Mayor Hugh Currin to Governor Robert Scott, May 13, 1970, 11:41 A.M., all in Governor Robert Scott Papers. See also Raleigh News and Observer, May 14, 1970, and Oxford Public Ledger, May 15, 1970. I also relied heavily on my interviews with former assistant chief of police Doug White, Mayor Hugh Currin, Carolyn Thorpe, Linda Ball, Eddie McCoy, Herman Cozart, and several others who prefer to remain anonymous. Sources for the nationwide violence in May 1970 are cited below in my notes for chapter 6. The quote about the threat to “the whole economic and social structure of the nation” comes from Business Week, May 16, 1970.