Blood Done Sign My Name

by Timothy B. Tyson

  My understanding of the growth of the textile industry in the Carolinas and its racial politics draws on Jacqueline Dowd Hall et al., Like a Family: The Making of a Southern Cotton Mill World (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987), 183–236. The Southern Textile Bulletin is quoted in John A. Salmond, Gastonia 1929: The Story of the Loray Mill Strike (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), 113. See also Liston Pope, Millhands and Preachers (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965).

  For the Brown v. Board of Education decision, see Richard Kluger’s definitive work Simple Justice (New York: Knopf, 1976). A brief but thoughtful exploration of the case is provided by James Patterson, Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). For the white reaction against the decision, see Michael Klarman, “How Brown Changed Race Relations: The Backlash Thesis,” Journal of American History 81 (June 1994): 81–118. My story of the Gator draws on my interviews with Dewey Tyson, Tommy Tyson, and Vernon Tyson.

  For the campaign of segregationist terrorism in the late 1950s, see, for example, Tyson, “Dynamite and the ‘Silent South.’ ” See also “Intimidation, Reprisal, and violence in the South’s Racial Crisis” (American Friends Service Committee, 1959); Barbara Patterson, “Defiance and Dynamite,” New South 18 (May 1963): 8–11. The quote referring to “shots and dynamite blasts” comes from Southern Patriot, vol. 15, no. 1 (January 1957): 1. The Arkansas legislature called the integration crisis in Little Rock part of “the international communist conspiracy” in a December 1958 report by the Special Education Committee of the Arkansas Legislative Council, reprinted in Wilson Record and Jane Cassells Record, eds., Little Rock U.S.A. (San Francisco: Chandler Publishing, 1960), 196–99. South Carolina editor Thomas Waring called for secession and sanctioned a terrorist bombing campaign in the pages of the Charleston News and Courier and is quoted to that effect in A. M. Secrest’s “In Black and White: Press Opinion and Race Relations in South Carolina, 1954–1964,” Ph.D. dissertation, Duke University, 1971), 217–18. Waring was even more explicit in conversations with Reverend John B. Morris, who made notes of the exchange that are housed in the Reverend John B. Morris Papers in the South Carolinia Library, University of South Carolina.

  My account of my Uncle Earl’s collision with Jim Crow comes from my interviews with him and with my father, and from my father’s diary.

  CHAPTER NINE: THE CASH REGISTER AT THE POOL HALL

  My account of the march to Raleigh relies on the Raleigh News and Observer, May 23, May 24, May 25, and May 28, 1970; the Oxford Public Ledger, May 26, 1970; “Application to Use Public Buildings and Grounds,” May 21, 1970, Golden Frinks to Office of the Lieutenant Governor, May 21, 1970; and “Black Grievances and Demands,” all in Governor Robert Scott Papers; McAuliffe, “Transformation,” 126–27. My interviews with Benjamin Chavis, Mayor Hugh Currin, James Edward McCoy, Golden Frinks, Herman Cozart, Carolyn Thorpe, William A. Chavis, and Linda Ball provided information for my account of the march and also for my description of the Soul Kitchen. For more on the freedom movement in Hyde County, see Cecelski, Along Freedom Road.

  Richard Wright’s observations about the options available to an African American man in the South come from “How Bigger Was Born,” an introduction to Native Son (1940; New York: Perennial, 1987), vii.

  For the history of racial separatism in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, see Carson, In Struggle, 191–228. See also Wesley Hogan, Many Minds, One Heart (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, forthcoming).

  For the politics of racial backlash in North Carolina, including the figures quoted in the text, see Jack Bass and William Devries, The Transformation of Southern Politics (New York: Basic Books, 1976), 444 and 476–77. See also William Billingsley, Communists on Campus: Race, Politics and the Public University in Sixties North Carolina (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1999). Jim Gardner’s endorsement of George Wallace is from Earl Black, Southern Governors and Civil Rights (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 111. The early ascension of Jesse Helms is covered in Billingsley’s fine book and in Julian M. Pleasants and Augustus M. Burns, Frank Porter Graham and the 1950 Senate Race in North Carolina (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990). Ernest Furguson, Hard Right: The Rise of Jesse Helms (New York: Norton, 1986), explores his later rise to national prominence. See also Juan Williams, “Carolina Gothic,” Washington Post, October 28, 1990, and also Black and Black, The Rise of Southern Republicans, 102–111. The quotes from white banker Graham Wright, black businessman James Gregory, and city official John K. Nelms are all from the Raleigh News and Observer, May 29, 1970.

  CHAPTER TEN: PERRY MASON IN THE SHOESHINE PARLOR

  My sources for the big fires in Oxford on Monday, May 25, 1970, include several interview sources who wish to remain anonymous. I cross-checked their accounts with news stories in the Raleigh News and Observer, May 26, May 27, May 28, and May 29, 1970; the Oxford Public Ledger, May 29 and June 1, 1970; McAuliffe, “Transformation,” 126–27, as well as my interview with Mayor Hugh Currin. The quote comparing downtown Oxford to Berlin after the bombing raids of World War II is from the Raleigh News and Observer, May 29, 1970. The account of the young boys’ arrests for firebombings relies on the Oxford Public Ledger, June 1 and June 5, 1970. It was also very helpful to look at the scores of photographs taken in Oxford in the summer of 1970 that are housed in the News and Observer collection at the North Carolina Division of Archives and History.

  My account of the trial of Robert G. Teel and Larry Teel relies foremost on Granville County court records Robert G. Teel, 70-CR-1847, murder by aiding and abetting Robert Larry Teel; Robert G. Teel, 70-CR-1848, assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill, inflicting serious bodily injury; Robert Larry Teel, 70-CR-1849, murder. I obtained a partial transcript from one of the folders. My characterization of Judge Robert Martin comes from Michael Myerson’s Nothing Could Be Finer (New York: International Publishers, 1977), 180. For the quote about James Ferguson, see Cecelski, Along Freedom Road, 74. I also relied on my interviews with Robert G. Teel, Billy Watkins, William H. S. Burgwyn, Carolyn Thorpe, William A. Chavis, Benjamin Chavis, Linda Ball, Gene Edmundson, James Ferguson, and James Chavis, along with three others who asked not to be identified, and on coverage of the trial in the Raleigh News and Observer, July 24, July 28, July 29, July 30, July 31, August 1, and August 3, 1970.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN: WE ALL HAVE OUR OWN STORIES

  The quote about Oxford’s “voluntary desegregation” program comes from Heritage and Homesteads, 64. The quip about white liberals in North Carolina comes from Osha Gray Davidson, The Best of Enemies: Race and Redemption in the New South (New York: Scribner’s, 1996), 83–84, and refers specifically to Governor Luther Hodges, something of an archetypal Tarheel liberal. The best source for this political tradition is Chafe, Civilities and Civil Rights.

  My account of the post-trial boycott in Oxford relies upon Raleigh News and Observer, August 4, 1970; McAuliffe, “Transformation,” 128–29; and my interviews with Benjamin Chavis, Mayor Hugh Currin, James Edward McCoy, Linda Ball, and several who preferred to remain anonymous. For the coercive aspects of other civil rights–era boycotts, see, for example, Adam Fairclough, Race and Democracy: The Civil Rights Struggle in Louisiana, 1915–1972 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1995). The quote from James Baldwin comes from The Fire Next Time (London: Michael Joseph, 1963), 20.

  There is not yet a strong account of the Wilmington Ten convulsions of the early 1970s; these were complex and controversial events, and it is not surprising that their full history has yet to emerge. Larry Reni Thomas, The True Story Behind the Wilmington Ten (Hampton, Va.: U.B. & U.S. Communications, 1982), is an invaluable account in that the author had unique access to African American sources at the base of the movement in Wilmington. John Godwin, Black Wilmington and the North Carolina Way: Portrait of a Community in the Era of Civil Rights Protest (Lanham
, Md.: University Press of America, 2000), contains much helpful information but is an ideologically driven liberal interpretation, grounded in a defense of Wilmington. Michael Myerson, Nothing Could Be Finer (New York: International, 1978), offers useful research but remains an unreliable work of advocacy journalism on behalf of the Wilmington Ten defendants. My brief account of the troubles in Wilmington owes something to all three of these accounts. But my most important sources for the struggles in Wilmington are in the two years of research I did there in the late 1980s. These sources include the Wilmington Morning Star, the Hanover Sun, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Newsweek, and my own interviews with about fifty local residents, including members of the Rights of White People organization.

  Sheriff Marion Millis’s admission that he and many of his deputies were members of the Ku Klux Klan was reported in the Raleigh New and Observer, October 27, 1965. Wayne King, “The Case Against the Wilmington Ten,” New York Times Magazine, December 3, 1978, 160–76, was especially helpful and is the source for the “framed a guilty man” quote. Dr. Heyward Bellamy, former New Hanover County Superintendent of Schools, shared with me white supremacist propaganda by his predecessor, H. M. Roland. The quote from ROWP leader Leroy Gibson, which refers to the white supremacy campaign of 1898, is from “Transcript of Speech by Leroy Gibson,” Hugh McRae Park, November 11, 1971, Rights of White People (ROWP) File, Wilmington Police Department, courtesy of Dr. Heyward Bellamy. Dr. King’s scheduled appearance at Williston the day after his assassination is reported in the Wilmington Morning Star, April 5, 1968.

  My account of the Wilmington Race Riot of 1898, which Dr. H. Leon Prather Sr. more properly terms a “massacre and coup d’état,” rests upon Prather, “We Have Taken a City”; Gilmore, Gender and Jim Crow; Herbert Shapiro, White violence and Black Response: From Reconstruction to Montgomery (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1987), 64–75; and Cecelski and Tyson, eds., Democracy Betrayed, especially Dr. Prather’s masterfully concise summary of events, “We Have Taken a City: A Centennial Essay,” 15–41.

  The story of my sojourn in the Flat Branch “commune” relies heavily on my diary from those years and on conversations with Rob Shaffer and Perri Morgan. The account of the racial controversy at Parker’s Fork United Methodist Church comes from my conversations with the Morgan family and Beth Polson.

  Those who wish to further explore the 1979 murders of the Communist Workers Party leadership by Ku Klux Klan and American Nazi Party terrorists in Greensboro should consult Elizabeth Wheaton, Codename Greenkil: The 1979 Greensboro Killings (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987), Signe Waller, Love and Revolution: A Political Memoir (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002), and Sally Bermanzohn, Through Survivor’s Eyes (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2003).

  CHAPTER TWELVE: “GO BACK TO THE LAST PLACE WHERE YOU KNEW WHO YOU WERE”

  The quote from Bernice Johnson Reagon comes from Lucy Massie Phenix and Vernonica Selver, You Got to Move (1986), a film about the Highlander Folk School. My account of my interview with Robert Teel rests on my own memories and on the taped and transcribed interview itself. My account of my conversations with Doug White and other members of the Oxford Police Department and also with attorney Billy Watkins relies upon my notes. To tell the story of my trip to Allen’s Country Nightlife with Herman Bennett, I consulted the newspaper accounts in the Greensboro News and Record, the Atlanta Constitution, the Raleigh News and Observer, and the North Carolina Independent Weekly, and talked with Rhonda Lee and Herman Bennett.

  EPILOGUE: BLOOD DONE SIGN MY NAME

  The bus trip I took with my students from the University of Wisconsin at Madison has been documented, including the wording of my father’s prayer at Destrehan Plantation, at an excellent website: www.news.wisc.edu/freedom. I am also grateful to my students for permitting me to read and quote from their journals. The statistical assessment of the life chances of African Americans is from Glenn C. Loury, The Anatomy of Racial Inequality (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002), 4. “The past is never dead—it isn’t even past” is from William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun (New York: vintage, 1975). Dr. King’s reference to the “thingification” of human beings is from King, Where Do We Go from Here? 123. Milan Kundera is quoted in Griffin Fariella, Red Scare: Memories of the American Inquisition (New York: Norton, 1995), 23.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  TIMOTHY B. TYSON was born and raised in North Carolina, where he earned his Ph.D. from Duke University in 1994. He is associate professor of Afro-American Studies at the University of Wisconsin and lives in Madison with Perri Morgan and their two children. His last book, Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of Black Power, won the James Rawley Prize and the Frederick Jackson Turner Prize from the Organization of American Historians. His first book, Democracy Betrayed: The Wilmington Race Riot of 1898 and Its Legacy, co-edited with David S. Cecelski, won the Outstanding Book Award from the Gustavus Meyers Center for the study of Human Rights in North America.

  ALSO BY TIMOTHY B. TYSON

  Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and

  the Roots of Black Power

  Democracy Betrayed: The Wilmington Race Riot of

  1898 and Its Legacy

  (coeditor and contributor with David S. Cecelski)

  Copyright © 2004 by Timothy B. Tyson

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Three Rivers Press, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. www.crownpublishing.com

  THREE RIVERS PRESS and the Tugboat design are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Tyson, Timothy B., 1959–

  Blood done sign my name / Timothy B. Tyson.—1st ed.

  Includes bibliographical references

  1. Oxford (N.C.)—Race relations. 2. African Americans—Crimes against—North

  Carolina—Oxford—History—20th century.

  3. Murder—North Carolina—Oxford—History—20th century.

  4. Trials (Murder)—North Carolina—Oxford. 5. Riots—North Carolina—Oxford—

  History—20th century. 6. Tyson, Timothy B.—Childhood and youth. 7. Whites—

  North Carolina—Oxford—Biography.

  8. African Americans—North Carolina—Oxford—Biography.

  9. Oxford (N.C.)—Biography. I. Title.

  F264.095T97 2004

  975.6’535’00496073—dc22

  2003019804

  www.randomhouse.com

  eISBN: 978-0-307-41993-4

  v3.0