The State of Things; Blood Done Signed My Name

it's been the post the pain this is the state of things i'm going to uncover in may of nineteen seventy a black man named henry maryland was murdered in the granville county town of oxnard

two white men whose family had ties to the ku klux klan were acquitted in the case timothy tracing recalls that summer he was a ten year old son of oxford's white methodist minister tyson has now written a book there's the murder the riots that broke out right after the torching of the tobacco warehouse and the fact that no one was ever brought to justice for killing an american jason writes that this is happening against the backdrop of the civil rights movement and desegregation effort that we're not moving as smoothly as our modern day histories might be used to tysons book is titled blood guns sign my name is taken from an old spiritual and suggests that the civil rights effort in the south was not entirely achieved through an experience to nonviolence and you look at that here in north carolina today on the state of things tyson and blood done sign my name fb fb

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this is the state of things i'm all in the pan cover harry marrow was killed in broad daylight by three white men in the granville county town of oxford now used to set occurred twenty years earlier and the murder of henry marrow might not have generated the reaction it did but henley marrow was murdered in may of nineteen seventy andy event launched a race riot and more in the town of oxford only a week earlier for students in the end had been killed at kent state in ohio the five days earlier mississippi state troopers had fired into a dormitory at jackson state university killing to their tyson was ten years old and living in oxford north carolina that summer the son of a liberal methodist preacher tyson so race relations differently than did most whites in his town thanks in part to a family history of dissenting from jim crow segregation laws committee tyson grow up and attended college at unc greensboro where in his first class as a

freshman he would go back to oxford and write a paper on the murder of henry merrow now a professor of afro american studies at the university of wisconsin in madison timothy tyson has written a book on the marrow murder titled let dunn sign my name and timothy tyson has come back to north carolina to talk with us about that welcome to the state of things with it you know it had to be you and we welcome your calls a sour if you'd like to join the conversation or number is one eight seven seven nine six to nine eight six two that's one eight seven seven its all three nine six to nine eight six two will lead them sign my name in your book on the narrow case isn't just a retelling of that case it's also a memoir and a history of oh a wider range of race relations in north carolina yes it's a it's it really began assessed as you said is this paper for school and then i wrote it as my master's thesis at duke university in nineteen ninety two and you could read all two hundred pages of that master's thesis and never know that we live there that i knew these

people and that these events that we were intensely if marginally involved in these events so that's a scrupulously scholarly kind of telling of the story of this one is factual and yeah have i think i think it's more honest because i've come forth and told me how i was involved in how we were involved in and then braided in with this kind of family history sure what do you think is the the most telling pursell aspect of the story that you are happy to be able to work into the book that you could not to say of work did your master's thesis well i think there are the history of the south has been told in cartoons in many ways people don't understand that neither black nor white is a simple and unified category as people think it is that there's all kinds of complexities on both sides of the color line that there's a rich kind of humor and sort of blues irony about all the stories to do and so i'm glad to be able to tell it with a little

more breath of understanding right now i'd like to start with a murder case because i think perhaps for many who are listening to this maybe they're in for new information this is history for you because you were ten years old in the town of oxford at the time but to take us back to may of nineteen seventy a henry marrow there was a black man and then there was a twenty three year old army veteran he was hanging around in the parking lot near the store with some other young black man he walked into the store he said something to the woman at the cash register who was daughter in all of robert peel thin out robert teel and larry geological plea deal and his stun son and stepson chased him off the property and a couple hundred feet off the property shot him in the buttocks with a shotgun he skated onto his face in the gravel they begin with the stock they broke one of the guns over his head and fractured his skull very badly and denies he pled for his life they put the bear to someone but the

barrel against his forehead and pulled the trigger now in their account of the story the pulling of the trigger in that last shot was an accident you know first they played self defense than they said it was an accident and in the attorney james fergason for the prosecution civil rights attorney from charlotte i said it's got to be the first recorded cases history of accidental self defense right it was an interesting trial and i had to talk about how the murderer played out in oxford because there were riots there was a tobacco warehouse that burned but let's jump ahead to the trial which took place later that summer was a pretty quick trial by today's standards and so you had two men who were tried but not assert that witnesses had seen you sing us out robert peel and larry to you were tried as father and son yes father and son the stepson roger oakley the authorities were

unclear about who the third mcmahon of the scene was and who exactly shouts the final shot or will likely run and i don't know if they were clear on that or not because i can't stand here and tell you that i know who fired the final shots actually think it doesn't matter three men set out after him and they set out to kill him if they didn't set out to kill him why it with a break a shotgun stuck over his head which itself might've killed and i'm not sure that he would have survived had their foot shot never been fired but so i think to me it doesn't much matter and i think legally and morally actually under their own testimony certainly all of them could've been convicted of manslaughter even if no witnesses and there were witnesses the witnesses testified that larry fired the final shot whether he did or not there is a god to jail yeah couldn't but then you have the stuff larry was a sign that after all the witnesses said that that they had chased him in that robert peel had ordered larry po to shoot him then and it's been late he'll get shot him

and he had all the witnesses said that that was rather engines yes and then on the last day of the trial just like perry mason and roger oakley testified that he had fired the fowl shot not his father not his step brother acts it and so he had accidentally fired a foul shot then they were acquitted by this all white jury presumably on that basis i think it's actually just a jury revolt everybody was upset about school integration and that was about to come that will happen at all so that in in july the end of july they were found not guilty and then roger oakley though he was had been himself said that he fired the final shot the grand jury apparently disagreed and wouldn't prosecute and so the three of them were acquitted and you didn't know you were ten years old at the time that this is all coming down and in oxford and he

recalled hearing news of the murder of henry aaron from the general sales from gerald was my age i played with him almost every day we lived you know five houses away from each other is that one of the younger son of the man who was implicated in the death of a younger son in the family and he's the one who told me about this and dan and so far and my memory of that is the journal said daddy roger mims shot on an acre and didn't later on that even my sister going out when down the street and sort of got down behind the wallabies garland tears and looked over and saw men with guns all over girls' families poor rich white yes and some of the mourners reversible karachi know yes and then the next morning we walked to school and there were there was glass all over the pavement downtown in the stores were bored boarded up and there were highway patrolman on every corner and that the governor

it's a fifty hour patrolman to take over the downtown and they've been a big riot the night before and then jailed and i didn't see each other again for twelve years now the next time i saw him was when i went to interview his father and ask him why they killed in america when i was a freshman in college and what to do what his father say to that question we'll only he wouldn't talk to me for the longest time but denied joe drove up a lot still drove up in time we greeted one another and talk about the engine idling puts together and then tuesday picked up my tape recorder and turned it on and said i'll tell you what you wanna know and then he said in his words that later committed suicide come in in my store wanda four letter word my daughter in law and so no one has ever been found guilty for the murder of her in there

no effective all been acquitted there are there parallels here to be the more famous nationally famous emmett till case the fifteenth the odds a teenager black teenager who was murdered in mississippi in nineteen fifty five and in more most recently the us justice department or the federal level is been talking about has reopened the case and tried to find his murderer's bring them to justice any effort any such effort happening in the henry marin kids not that i know of it's not and they've been acquitted so i don't know what there's not that's really not now on a workout i'm also not sure that it matters so much i mean a terrible brutality injustice was committed in oxford in nineteen seventy but it's not really about that one thing i mean we can get justice for forty and fifty years of slavery and segregation and racial care system and watch which white people owned everything in but people did all the media labor an independent and served at the pleasure of white people to be killed

with impunity that this even put your finger down on any cannes in the south just take the map out and set your finger down and i can find you a similar story set in my mind some people might be interested in that i don't think it matters that much and what about the people who who made this possible what about the social system in which this was in some ways inevitable what about the people of my parents' who knew this was wrong but didn't do too much about that and your father did more than most might have an interview i'm proud of my father but nonetheless it in his generation of white liberals really didn't you know we need a new social system not not at the commission and a committee disc that ian discuss the problem and help communicate you know with the eminent i'm not against communication with the things that were being put forward that bad variant of the political spectrum didn't address the problem we're talking with timothy tyson he is author of the book blood done sign my name it's a book about the nineteen seventeen murder of henry marrow in oxford in granville county we will talk more about what we have just

started to discuss here who are taking their calls as well are numbers one eight seven seven nine six to ninety six two support for the state of things comes from the corporation for public broadcasting and the listeners and in going and going chris b

they are this is the state of things i'm linda uncover henry marrow was twenty three years old in nineteen seventy when he was killed in the streets of oxford north carolina the murder of perpetuated by whites against defenseless black enough time

sparked race riots in that granville county town in his new book blood and sign my name author timothy tyson he remembers the murder and its aftermath tyson at the time in nineteen seventy was a ten year old boy and is now a professor of afro american studies at the university of wisconsin in madison but back then in nineteen seventies is that you were ten years old and your dad was the minister of the methodist church attendance and before the break you were saying that you're dead and other liberals light levels of the time hadn't done enough we'll see because you're you're making the case in your book that that this happy not happening in a vacuum the murder of henry narrow and the way the whites you we're a convert who were tried were not convicted of that did not happen in a vacuum the thing is though you have to understand the human condition is not always amenable policy programs i didn't mean to suggest that i think i would've done better or different or that they

did something inadequate or wrong i just mean to say that what needed to win it was off the chart of the political possibility i mean frankly in it was about sixty five percent of americans not just whites but americans window open market the king made a speech that i have a dream speech a week later they told pollsters that's a civil right and has gone too far and too fast that before the civil rights act of nineteen sixty four so it is still white and colored public accommodations all of that jim crow still in place it's before the voting rights act of nineteen sixty five so african americans don't have the right to vote and can't use public accommodations but most people in america think it's gone too far too fast and so in that condition and i don't know that i can fall what white liberals we're trying to do it's just that it didn't matter and then here we are in nineteen seventy in oxford north carolina and there's the murder of henry now and

you're saying that that would disrupt the backup there was that later that for later that fall when school reopened the classes were going to be on the segregated for the first time and he we are sixteen years after the hunter says porter education writer sixty years and there they're just starting to de segregate the schools and because of the courts because the federal government beyond a compulsion and what you do you say that the weather wasn't time verve there was more could've been done that you don't know what i could have been that but let's just talk a little bit about your family your father was his methodist minister and he took some heat for the position to eighty eight he invited black ministers into his pulpit on a regular basis in and get some threat to his job frankly heat pierre he worked across the color line he tried to be a kind of swinging door between the black and white communities i'm so admire what he did he also wants you know he did his best to teach us about what was going on you know you hear a reading here that at that point here and this is about a klan rally and

your dad got to read it i reckon we were not the first white southerners who is dead it took him to a klan rally but our visit was probably different than most one evening when i was about six the year before we move to oxford then a troubled mind brother vernon me into chief pontiac which is what we call a car bernie was almost tan sat in the front seat and are perched in the back my arms helped oversee between him and at that been nobody wore safety belts we rattle down highway eighty seven through the peach orchards of the sandhills across little river to the county line rarely meets cumberland knew peggy fish house daddy stop the car on a dirt road uphill from a big grassy field we watch the carloads of people arriving and looked down as these cables to erect a giant wooden cross chief pontiac was parked close enough so that we could hear the fiery speeches and see the fiery cross a sane that took on the air some kind of strange county fair but as the flames flickered below that

he told us about racism and hatred and evil writing home together in the darkness we saying jesus loves the little children all the children of the world's red and yellow black and white precious in this site jesus loves the little children of the world at some point one of us as did exactly what he had taken us to see the cross burning i wanted you to know what hate looks like he said timothy tyson reading from his book blood guns sign my name why the title that public concern spiritual it does i think southerners know know somehow when what the blood means but nonetheless the benefit of other people i would say that there's a kind of crucifixion in this book and this is not an overtly religious book but there's a kind of faith i think that resonates through at mit and also there's a crucifixion at its heart it's also on and there's also you know my i come from a long line of of free will

bet there's a methodist preachers and wayward bridges and safely teachers and i think there's a kind of blood questionnaire to because it's sort of a family story and so we're that blood can be denied either i also think it's also a song that started out as a slave spiritual mccain a blues song in the nineteen thirties became a kind of gospel song has as black folks for a new country began to rise the war two era and then after the year after that the radio for dated nineteen forty seven and its sales it's a bit like it's a rock n roll song really almost you can come here just very common when you listen to it and i like the sort of the senate are combat and earth and that when the world war two veterans that african americans have been all around the world fine for the country came back they heard that song and an it to them it meant you know we've poured our blood for this country now we now we need full citizenship and those were the shock troops of the civil rights movement and i

think that's when this thing going because he started out a second ago saying that there's a crucifixion here is what's been crucified in ramallah was crucified he wouldn't jesus that he was crucified and i'm i guess this is my effort to rank some kind of redemption out of that tragedy you also had sent a shot or two here in the book at what you think of the sort of rhyme a rosy picture of the civil rights movement and how change was brought about in the us desegregation civil rights and and you speak of martin luther king in the years since his murder i'm quoting here you know we have transformed king into a kind of innocuous santa claus genial and vacant benign vessel that can be filled with whatever generic good wishes the occasion dictate space right now my daughter went to my daughter grew up in a house with your aging black panthers and all you know

robert f williams of people like that and who knew the whole story of the movement as much as you can explain it to a first grader went to first grade on martin luther king day and came back on and said danny i thought martin luther king was black they had watered it down so much that she didn't even know that he was black and i looked at the path that they came for ma would elementary school in madison wisconsin and the last sentence was martin luther king died on april fourth nineteen sixty eight as if he had caught a terrible disease and fell ill as opposed to being assigned to be his ass name i just i just think we've tried that were living in the in the fading embers of love they'll social revolution and we're trying to retell it in a way that is acceptable to people usually think the case here that it wasn't just our lives are kings preaching about nonviolence that moved the country toward change but it was in fact the threat of violence from blacks against the

war against the white sedan the country at large absolute that brought about the change you make the case that what that's what happened in oxford absolutely do our wide sinatra did not consider changing the racial care system and oxford in any way until the rocks began to fly and the buildings begin to burn and now it with one thing afghanistan is that this civil rights movement and all over the place in a camp in a lot of different ways and there were places where non violent pleading work in rear calls unconscious work and their work but far more often and certainly at the federal level if you wanna look at why did the federal coverage intervene they did so because of the cold war because american foreign policy are our domestic race practices were threat to american foreign policy the bit the number one foreign policy problem head and the other thing was domestic stability the country was recovering ungovernable and again and in oxford this so getting better history that you start writing about in an inn the trips to propel your story takes

off from in your book murder of henry merritt and riots broke out after the tobacco warehouse burned in oxford several and several of them burned and then boom was almost thirty four years ago this week i believed the day there was a march from oxford to the state capital in raleigh yes they march from oxford all the way to reilly to talk to governor scott and who refused to talk to them right but it and yet thousands of people there were spouses yes there is a core shaft understand that after the democrats' became identified with the civil rights movement the democratic vote had fallen off in north carolina and sixty eight by forty two percent white democrat yes in fact you know george wallace a believer in second here in in nineteen sixty eight nixon took north carolina the senate who came in second was george wallace didn't have came in last so i think scott must have found himself in a position where he was didn't want to be identified with that but

in any case they went to the government to to you know to bridge their grievances and the door was slammed in their face and that night much of oxford downtown oxford called fire alarm if the king center riot is the language of the unheard yet but you mess in your book you say from a series of interviews that this was not something that just was spontaneous the burning of the tobacco warehouses but was in fact the work of men who knew their way around the military there was a big movement in oxford there was a protest movement at any party caucus thousands of people but inside of that there was a small knot of mostly veterans and most of the veteran vietnam care of their veterans on osama bin that atlantic and republican korea but come and they our plan to cut a military operation they would have a diversionary attack and then and they are the ones who burned you know forty some buildings and oxford he

was the butler wasn't teenagers run into his shoes with coke bottles but it were but literally and who knew what they were doing and essentially a one time one of them said it was to me it was like we had a cash register down there to pool hall measure count up how much money we cost is why people he said when we cost him enough money we knew that they would start with you so the history you would write of the civil rights movement and that you write here is that it wasn't just the the gandhi escorts of of amara luther king or as i think you refer to at one point rosa parks tired feet but and it was there was some eggs are cracked shall we say he even in birmingham the height of non violent direct action i'm not trying to diminish non violent direct action by any means but non violent direct action and thus was a lot more appealing to people than when the alternative was the terror of going out and in birmingham blacks who were not involved in the movement so much rioted overturned place cars ravage nine blocks of

birmingham there was a huge riot in birmingham in the midst of martin luther king's crusade there and if you look at the memo was inside the kennedy administration they're afraid is going to be a race war in birmingham i'm not saying that's why kennedy went on tv and talked about the civil rights act but he that's a big part of it so in other words for the change to combat those in power have to see a choice yes it's this way or in some ethereal realm among saints that you know unlike herself it was like politics you know i have sung it was about power and keep it was about calculations and you know and the phones are numbers one eight seven seven nine six to nine eight six two timothy tyson is our guest he is the author of blood done sign my name thomas is with a syringe for a high thomas i'm far happier to almost a python out caribbean or thirty four you've outlived a lot

more sales and all markers were educated here and when that happens what whole herds that we couldn't do anything about it that have dealt with me throughout my life and it just gave me to hear that one would bring him to life god bless ye thomas thank you what would you tell us how will you at the time i will right in the middle of playing a lot of like body of criminal competed moment there has been a racial thing with binoculars and it was yeah it was really a tram when we were taught as young black jew who respect and all as people entered what to what did you do

with the time that as their henry marrow murder and end the riots afterwards we're a nation at pretty much lost if at balad and we gathered in our front yard and every committee and disgusted and and paris with the owners we have a wall they are and the person came out and strap the car miles coffee is an end let it you know stay silent god would take it all of this we have a very strong religious community and we just had our fake think often that ended what did did you take part in the riots yourself or did you where where were you on that divide guardian because artists you know a fear that car bought we have never witnessed a very thoughtful this magnitude though all you will lift the curfew for all that we are very very quiet where i was like isn't what you call thomas a free one eight seven seven

nine six to nine eight six two is our number timothy tyson's our guest blood dance on my name is his book daniel is who this rally hi there daniel my arm i want to comment on the racial tension and even county area now i know the both the right and the ramble county got their union of north carolina and racial tension out there's very much that they are far too much about it before but there's a segregation within the community and are vance county area i understand you have a quarter of the town called you know what's his plan for streets as though there are still caucasian people living in the barracks i think that a lot of agencies or that or how you got that on the internet that area still very early also

people bail for the killing joke about american child or five four by white five for five i'd like to put to a year come as detonators well i appreciate you calling i will say that you know this is america we've actually i live in wisconsin these days milwaukee's was served in a place i've ever been and i i grew up in jim crow south nothing in in many ways in the south we live closer to each other and knew each other a little better and things are often more tense elsewhere i will say tom that we've that we've turned away from the dream of integration people have the courts have backed off of it and people are backed off of it and the schools are about a segregated now as they have been since about nineteen sixty nine i think you know it's regrettable are now in your book you do address some of this issue of deaths of paternalism that you find that you you wrote about your grandmother your mother's mother sure

some folks would say he would say well things were calmer back then people from using quotation marks around people got along and you see that was part that's kind of a dam it to white youths well white people were left more firmly in charge and that they were relationships between black and white people were very fixed and that with in that fine work work could be loving and generous and people would say oh she's just like family talk about people who work for them as if those people as if they had a free and honest relationship with those people which was not true at all of course they were a quote so they couldn't really be friends although that'd mean it was a genuine love between people and real attachments so i can understand how some people might think that the world has been lost but in many ways it was a world that didn't exist timothy tyson is our guest is author of blood and sign my name of book that

focuses on the nineteen seventy murder of henry marrow indiana town of oxford and granville county one eight seven seven nine six to ninety six to his own number if you join the conversation one eight seven seven nine sixty nine eight six two more with timothy tyson just ahead three are here then it's blue

this is the state of things i'm linda pan cover timothy tyson is the author of blood don't sign my name a book that is part memoir and part history of what north carolina's most infamous racial incidents the murder of henry marrow in oxford north carolina in nineteen seventy were talking with timothy tyson today and taking your calls one eight seven seven nine six to nine eight six two and let's go the phones now we have eugene is in many high there eugene

thank you after many years as i remember in those days in nineteen seventy eight very much felt there was a lot of people who aren't in the cartilage wealth of the school when the show went in school they would parents who don't want to work there toronto oh would close behind you and a lot of people walk around the local community and then you know why areas of light largely quite well in an area up there timothy advertising he recall at yourself as our school kid in nineteen seventy one the following year i went to school in wilmington we moved away from oxford and there were two security guards killed at that

it was the ninth grade center were aware that there were people cut stabbed beat you know i myself in the back of my head split open and a riot you we had a lot of violence in the schools they were police and irish power schools and they were six hundred national guard troops downtown it was really a turbulent and violent time to many tyson is our guest on the state of things today he's author of the new book blood done sign my name it's about a murder of a black man in oxford north carolina and now may of nineteen seventy at the time to the tyson was ten years old and the son of the methodist minister in town and to tyson's father is with us now is well verne tyson welcome to state of things and your son credits you a foul mood that's you've read every word he's ever written and i'm curious what you think about it the account that he gives of of race relations at that time in an oxford in the end wellington as well or

he's become art teacher in some way is that he knows so the field but i did know i knew more about postage stamp under my foot and he's sort of a broader context is a son wright's you you went out on a limb in the sixties and seventies arrow your the white minister and white churches and you're reaching out and sometimes getting a lot of flack from your congregation to do to curl up on that in nineteen fifty two and the supreme court said to do it with all deliberate speed in nineteen fifty four these variations years and everybody was talking about at barbershops are zero and for the church to be silent about it would've been strange and are awarded told us to love god but also to love our neighbor as ourselves and it was in the love of neighbor and working now and saying what it doesn't mean here in this community in black one woman suddenly you deliver excellent preacher if you talk

about the native americans now they are the ones that we really sort of the river and i said well i know that's true i agree with you many native americans do you know in this country you know and so it was that they all claim that welcomes and some metal on to the piece and others notably progress but there were they came together there were sparks year and indeed to the destiny write that your father was asked to find another place to preach outside of oxford after and that's what's in jail to wellington a saccharin well he learned there that there's some different stories about that you know i grew up would be a neighbor in oxford on one my favorite people who was on the best approach relations committee remember correctly at that church and he'd be chief said you know they asked at all and if they asked today if they didn't ask you to come back then how when it was set for the church again and no he didn't and i grew up with people teasing me about that we've been

run off and when i came back to do research black folks in graham county so your father you know he was too good for this community it's too bad about what they did to him daddy on the other hand of course was a he was a very successful mr we left oxford with wilmington he did very well he's pleased to hear the industry church in raleigh instead looks from stanford and is not the best preacher that ever be on the book have you ever met a preacher oh yes several times i read the back for revival meetings in homecoming and we've got wonderful friends there that we're going there this afternoon when we leave here so we have all along a good relationship with many people in the community over four years i was on a tradition where you are you say stayed for years and left and so i felt like that's what time it could come and i've done what i needed to there and then it's got a fun for now and is that it's a manager hey i just want to know what the river forgot about

how we've actually allowed the american experience so much in the even thought about it for what is your model begin with like it will set ideological much we try to keep the experience what this dude is how do they react the way even believe that it occurred in america or they think that they are the they're anomalies at that with a widespread cover know in heaven here in harney county well for you got three over lee county in canon kind of things happen here and i remember vividly it'll be an icky going in a corner store to get those people thins out of a jar you know the white kid so i couldn't get the cookies out of the jar the white knight you know for new white kids that i knew that a play with your own cooking alan and how that affected me show and one about what would you think about building now how you teach it to them well it's one thing yet i'll say is that in some ways they find it just took the world that students are growing that a

nineteen year old grows up into day it's so segregated and if it has so much racial tension and that they actually find this kind of story more believable than if i'm still martin luther king and nonviolence in some ways that that's the thing that they find a little hard to understand it and i think that's true of course they were raised on martin luther king and nonviolence and they've got a simplified version of that and they can have a hard time connecting that vision of it with the world and they actually live than if that was what happened then is rodney king on so why can't we get aloud where's i think the world when they hear the movement's history sir with the rough spots left on an and not smooth often sanitized i think it's something of a comfort to them because it speaks more to the world that they live in but things like that the idea that they would let you put your black hand in the same cookie jars a white boy that is the kind of thing that they have a hard time understanding and i think they don't understand the poisonous depth of white supremacy and this country

i'm curious and when asked the question of your father intimate as unburdened tyson i'm your son was written hear that perhaps the history we've had of the civil rights movement and the changes of inmate is a candy colored you know it said that the non violence alone that approach worked at but i think the committee is saying is it took they took the presence of some force you should have that happen i'm curious yourself what's your take on that will allow us to go for two well let's look mighty good to me you know because i've grown up and jim crow south and knew it nearly quote will be and for us to go from where over to martin luther king we have come a long way you know drive in as daisy you know and here was this black man who drove this white woman and he had lunch he couldn't cross but at the end she said i hope you're the best friend of got to understand that story perfectly there's love

and more than that story and the streets in the story but it was like a warm inside apple he had to stay inside apple but he lived off the apple and us all blacks operating a white world and learning how to live in it and we made we made progress before anybody ever raised his fist and said but i think that those kinds of relationships were possible in a world that was completely and utterly dominated by white people but inside of that like he said i think that apple metaphors great inside of that but people be in hair having as much genius as white people they'd found ways to to carve a space for themselves and have a wonderful life and friends assault and rich culture that that really is the most powerful cultural face of the earth after quarter echoes all around the globe even though i was so sure but people cops a lot inside of that i just think that and that social

structure those races ships were were inherently artificial and they disappeared because that world fell apart well thank you both for joining us today to thank you so much france poland timothy tyson is the author of blood and sign my name and his father vernon tyson was a preacher at the methodist church in oxford in nineteen seventy when henry marrow was murdered in that town and that's the basis of the book the book's title blood and sign my name comes from a song that began as a slave spiritual evolved later into a blues a man and was recorded by huddie ledbetter better known as the blues when leadbelly and let's go out now with a little of the blues version of blood diamonds sign my name anyway oh oh

the photos from abu ghraib prison continued to draw a worldwide media attention but one thing that may be overlooked is that the media did not take those images of iraqi prisoner abuse writer and photographer john rosenthal has some thoughts on that i don't find it surprising that the disturbing photograph taken at the abu ghraib prison were taken by a shelter bug from a military police battalion clowning around with a cheap digital camera and not by a professional journalist draped and lenses or that the video of nick burns death was just the handheld home movie of car as it turns out embedded professionals are to embed had

imbedded in fighting units upon whose good will and expertise their very lives depended imbedded in the pentagon's need to control the flow of visual information and embedded in the economic reality is selling newspapers back home to a readership that is generally happy not to know certain sex in bed in it so it seems not only means limited access it also means that the savage re of war must be visualized with an anesthetic that is safe and marketable the best war photographers in the world hired by news magazines to cover the war in iraq had to settle for the eggs out a system of baghdad visual adventures and firepower which desert colors and textures the murky beauty of tanks in sandstorms and the earnest faces of our brave young man the rather ho hum mysterious granger of war i realize now that had to be snapshots in handheld video not professional photographs that brought the news home not only because cheap snapshot technology is everywhere and impossible to block but because

snapshots are not mediated by a sensibility were forced to think about either to distrust or admire there's no ambitious artist magician standing behind a snapshot worried about lighting fill lenses and composition snapshots are innocent and contrived and for the most part happy like home videos they don't bother with elaborate ironies and machinations of art we take them spontaneously hoping to record what we'd like to remember and this usually means the best of times shock and awe the pentagon called it but nobody except frightened civilians was really surprised by america's firepower we'll shop lies in the discrepancy between what we believe to be true and what isn't and i'm asking that occur is shockingly in a second to kill looking at the snapshots from the abu ghraib prison we recognize right away the comic elements we've

seen in a thousand snapshots chuckling is the point of this show there's the familiar exaggerated which she's mo created typically for the camera the silly self mocking thumbs up gesture a man dressed like an action figure sitting on another man's back a pyramid of naked bodies someone with a leash around his neck even the snapshot of the hooded men naked and spread eagled with electrodes attached to his body seems to grotesque to be anything but an elaborate visual joke an attempt to recreate a cheesy has a name photo without a dominate tracks for a second or kill complicity between subject and photographer is assumed some kind of complicity is at the heart of most snapshots and then it says there's no complicity whatsoever no more than between a german soldier at an old rabbi dancing naked in the streets of berlin this is not playing a degradation the sea

is degradation it's even worse than torture because torture implies it's a muscat something you need as a cop you got to be serious about that but these prisoners are beyond contempt everything they believe about human dignity can be mocked especially the privacy of their bodies it's kind of like a snuff film american supply shock and awe a question remains to be seen whether the abu ghraib snapshots will change anything some changes have occurred already apparently tortured during interrogation his help and president bush and secretary of defense rumsfeld and apologized some say meaning mostly to the iraqi people and offered reparations a military court martial will undoubtedly convict the photographer and his foolish courts meanwhile the christian evangelical tells me the george bush's god's mercy to the godless iraqis the military police the photographs he says was simply young men and women who hadn't been raised

well and rush limbaugh asked his listing audience you ever heard of the need to blow some steam off jon rosenthal is a writer and photographer from chapel hill for today that's the state of things our program was produced by dave dewitt and directed by keith west our diversity is our technical director susan davis is senior producer and friend ross thank you for listening if you have a comment about our program drop us an email here are addressed is supposed to be a dinner and see a large events as wunc's support for the state of things comes from the corporation for public broadcasting i mean this is big is

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