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Episode #2006
Author Tim Tyson
Bullock-Brown: Natalie Bullock-Brown, Host
Tyson: Tim Tyson, author
Bullock-Brown: Many are familiar with the story of the 1955 lynching of Emit Till. Would you be surprised to learn that a similar incident took place right here in our state, in Oxford, North Carolina in 1970? The story is told by the best friend of the son of one of the murderers in the incident, and we'll meet that friend next on Black Issues Forum.
Voiceover: Funding for this program is made possible in part by UNC-TV members.
[THEME MUSIC]
Bullock-Brown: Good evening and welcome to Black Issues Forum. I'm Natalie Bullock-Brown. Our guest tonight is the author of a newly released book that not only chronicles a racially provoked murder in his hometown of Oxford, North Carolina, but the book also presents through memoir, history and compelling narrative, a picture of Civil Rights Era in North Carolina and the South. I'd like to introduce tonight's guest, Tim Tyson. He is the author of Blood Done Sign my Name, as well as Radio Free Dixie: RobertF. Williams and The Roots of Black Power and other works. He is also the John Hope Franklin Fellow at the National Humanities Center. Tim, welcome to Black Issues Forum.
Tyson: Thanks Natalie. Thanks for having me.
Bullock-Brown: It's great to have you here. Let's start off by just talking a little bit about your background. How did you get started in academia and also in writing about the issues that you've been writing about?
Tyson: Academia is kind of a stretch. I actually left high school and didn't go to college until I was 23 or 24. I went to UNC-Greensboro. The first thing I did when I was a freshman, actually, was to go up to my hometown of Oxford and look and interview Robert Teal, who was the father in this family that had committed this killing. Anyway, I was at UNC-G for a couple of years and then went down to Emory in Atlanta. I finished up there. And then I went to graduate school at Duke. And then I shipped off to Wisconsin-a foreign country right? It's 1,200 miles north of here.
Bullock-Brown: How did you get even.? I mean, you said that you didn't go to college initially, but once you got there, you really rolled because you kept going. What was it about learning or just the ability to bring history to life for other people that caused you to want to do it?
Tyson: I think really it starts in Oxford. When I was 10 and Jerold Teal, that I played with every day, came up in my driveway and said, in his words, "Daddy and Roger and 'em shot 'em a nigger." And then a small war erupted that summer. We had a murder trial, the acquittal of these killers, we had riots and arson and shooting. My family ended up having to sort of leave. We moved to Wilmington where the Wilmington 10 thing blew up. In Wilmington we had 600 National Guard troops in the streets of Wilmington. Two people were killed at my school in the ninth grade at Williston-the two security guards. We had people fighting with bricks and bats and chains and rocks and knifes. There was this kind of little race war that happened in Wilmington. We had a group down there called The Rights of White People, who were armed, paramilitary with hundreds of members. They had CB radios-you know, it was a paramilitary force. And there was the Klan rampaging. That stuff was happening all around me.
Bullock-Brown: So that inspired you?
Tyson: It made me want to know what was happening. I was sort of raised by my father, Vernon Tyson, and my mother, Martha Tyson. Daddy calls himself an Eleanor Roosevelt liberal. Race was his big thing. I grew up in this household where that was really the most important issues, not just because of the household, but because of what was happening around us. In our church it was a constant source of controversy. I knew my father was often. He was a really good preacher, but he was often in trouble with his parishioners about this issue-not all of them, you know. But that was what was happening in the '60s and '70s. It was an issue we couldn't dodge.
Bullock-Brown: That is what brought you to Blood Done Sign my Name?
Tyson: Yes. I was going back trying to make sense of it all.
Bullock-Brown: I've got you. Tell us-summarize for us what this book is about. What was the murder that took place that is at the heart of this book?
Tyson: Henry Marrow was a 23 year old African American Army veteran. He was the father of two little girls. His wife was pregnant with a third. He went up to this crossroads country store owned by Robert Teal that was in the Black community, and was accused of making a flirtatious remark to a white woman-Robert Teal's daughter-in-law. Robert Teal and his son and his step-son then chased Marrow off of the property with guns. He was a couple of 100 feet off the property. They shot him in the buttocks with a shotgun. They went over, and as he was crawling through the gravel they beat him with the stocks of the guns and broke a shotgun stock over his head-they fractured his skull very badly in two places and then just put the barrel of the riffle down on his forehead and pulled the trigger. The prosecutor said, "They killed him like you or I would kill a snake." This happened in front of people. This was not a murder mystery, and yet they weren't arrested very quickly. It took a couple of days. And then there was a reluctance to sort of charge them and that went slowly. Meanwhile, there were riots in the streets of Oxford. That summer there was a trial and an all white jury acquitted them on these charges, in spite of the fact that one of them actually admitted in open court that he had pulled the trigger-accidentally he said. James Fergusson, a brilliant attorney from Charlotte was involved. They had pled self defense. And then at the last day of the trail, Roger Oakley, the step-son, said he had done it but it was an accident. And Fergusson said, "This has to be the first incident in recorded human history of accidental self defense." But, at any rate, they were acquitted, partly in protest against what was going on. The schools were going to be integrated that fall and people were upset about that. So we had-you know, Ben Chavis was a 22-year-old high school teacher, and an adoptive-a first cousin really, of the murder victim. And so Chavis became the leader of this protest movement in Oxford that brought in the Civil Rights forces from across the state. Colton Frinks, who died recently, was one of the people involved.
Bullock-Brown: Let me ask you. 1970, I think, in a lot of people's minds, the Civil Rights Movement happened so long before that. But talk a little bit about North Carolina's history in terms of race and even a little bit about integration, because we were kind of late compared to the rest of the country.
Tyson: North Carolina has always had this kind of image of being a more progressive southern state. Whatever Mississippi conjures in the minds of people, North Carolina likes to think that it conjures the opposite. And we are a complicated state. One of the things is that the white power structure in North Carolina took on a kind of practice of paternalism early on.
Bullock-Brown: Can you explain that? What is that?
Tyson: Sure. That is where those who are firmly entrenched in power bestow largess upon those who are beneath them in a kind of noble generosity, that depends, of course, upon the subservient position of the person. He takes on the kind of manners that people have. It has always been part of how power operates. There is the gun and then there is the. Right? And of course, if the subservient one tries to step out of this dance of paternalism, then there is violence that always is behind it. It really started-in some ways, our legacy of paternalism started in 1898, when conservatives in North Carolina-white conservatives overthrew the state government and killed a lot of people, particularly in Wilmington. There is this kind of hidden history of interracialism in North Carolina. Black militancy is coupled with white. There was actually an interracial coalition that won every state office in North Carolina in the 1890s. And then, in 1898, the white conservatives overthrew that by force and by fraud and then took the vote away from black North Carolinians. And then the white North Carolinians who had sided with them really had nowhere to go politically. That is when-we think of it going like slavery and then segregation, which was not as bad as slavery, but it was still very bad. But actually, there was this period in between, and in North Carolina, this was a period that lasted until the turn of the century where black people were active citizens. They could vote, held high office and were in coalition with whites. But that had to stop, because they couldn't beat us at the ballot box. They had to resort to force. And having waded in blood to get in power, they then became paternalists. It is like, "She is just like family to us." But of course, your momma has health insurance, and she doesn't. You can say, "She is like family."
Bullock-Brown: Right, but do you treat her like family?
Tyson: Exactly. It all depends on a subservient relationship. Within the bounds of that there can be decency, generosity and even love. We are complicated people, but.
Bullock-Brown: If you protest, if you rebel, if you don't.
Tyson: .or if you act equal.
Bullock-Brown: .or if you act equal there is going to be retaliation. There is going to be hell to pay.
Tyson: Then you are going to find out what the relationship really was.
Bullock-Brown: Right.
Tyson: Paternalism is a kind of veneer for power. It is actually more effective at holding people in their place than violence by itself.
Bullock-Brown: Just to get back to the story-it is so similar. I mean, it is eerily similar to Emit Till's story. It brings up this whole issue of sex and race which is, you know, it is a back drop to Southern culture and history. Talk a little bit about what sex and race symbolize.
Tyson: It is actually a backdrop to world history in some ways. Groups of people-that is how you define who is and isn't human. Can they court your daughter? Or if you go near your daughter will you burn them alive? This is how Greeks and Armenians decide who is a human. This is sort of a kind of signifier everywhere, but particularly here because of slavery. Actually, if we changed the law. English common law said that the status of someone follows the father. But in America, early on, we changed the law so that it followed the mother. If white men, who had sex with their female African American slaves-if those children then followed the status of the father, they would have been free blacks, right? If you put enough free blacks the whole system would have collapsed. So they changed the law and made. They did two things. First they changed the law and made it follow the status of the mother. Do you ever wonder why a white man and a black woman can have black children but they can't have white children? Those children are half and half, but they are black in our system of race and the way we think of it. It all started with the economics of slavery in the early. And the taboo. Of course the one thing that would have busted everything is if black men and white women had children, then those children would have been born free, and yet they would have appeared to be. They would have looked no different than the children of a white man and a black woman, right?
Bullock-Brown: You talk about this issue of sex and race as a driving issue or a driving force behind this murder.
Tyson: Yes.
Bullock-Brown: Do we know what actually happened in that store?
Tyson: There was some confusion about what was said. There was a flirtatious remark made. Marrow-at the scene. Then Larry Teal said, "That is my wife you are talking to," and picked up a piece of wood and went at him. Marrow began to protest that he was actually talking to the sisters, meaning these two black women who were standing right there. He may have been talking to them, or he may have been talking to Larry Teal's wife. But he didn't put his hands on her and he. "A flirtatious remark," was made in some direction and misinterpreted and misconstrued. Or it was understood correctly, but the white man saw it as a threat to the whole thing, right? Many people felt that way. If you go through the governor's papers and read the mail to the governor in the 1960s, you will know that white people were very upset. They thought that school integration was going to bring on this cauldron of amalgamation and race mixing. If you look at it now it seems very twisted and sick and strange and inexplicable, but that is how it was
Bullock-Brown: You were 10 years old when this happened, right?
Tyson: Yes.
Bullock-Brown: Tell us a little bit about your personal story in relation to this incident. How did you find out about it? What did you think about it at the time? Has it haunted you? It seems like it has done something for you to now be writing this book.
Tyson: Absolutely. I heard about it from my friend whose father and brothers had done this. And then I remember walking down to the corner with my sister Boo and looking across the street and seeing my friend's house with armed men all over the front porch-some of them wearing Klan robes. And then, walking to school the next day, all the windows were broken out downtown and all the stores were covered with plywood. There was broken glass all in the streets. There had been a riot. We had 50 highway patrolmen on the streets of Oxford carrying shotguns. It looked like a war zone. I remember the warehouses burning. These were big, wooden warehouses just a few blocks away. It looked like the whole world was on fire.
Bullock-Brown: Did you understand what was going on?
Tyson: I did somewhat. We talked about it a little at home. I mean, I didn't understand the whole. Obviously I didn't understand the history enough. That is what drove me to write this book, and really what has explained most of the work I've done, is to try to get to the. I grew up in this bitterness, in this enmity and this anger and this, you know, struggle. I wanted to know why. That is why I went back to it.
Bullock-Brown: Was your family ever in peril as a result of your father's position?
Tyson: We got death threats. There were people who were always trying to run my father off-out of the church. When I went back to Oxford to do the research for this book and I began to interview some of the local Black Community, Mrs. Chavis-Mary Katherine Chavis, whom I adore, got on the phone and said, "You remember-Reverend Tyson, the one they run off? After Dickie, yes, that's right." She went around and got me a whole lot of interviews saying, "You remember, he was the one they ran out of town." That is not precisely-the facts on that are a little murky too.
Bullock-Brown: That was-you got.
Tyson: I also think that it was because-I got teased. I came back to Oxford and I spent the summers there when I was growing up. Little kids teased me that we had gotten run out of town. I love my daddy. If you mess with my daddy, I'll write a book about you! [LAUGHS]
Bullock-Brown: You've got some other titles coming soon.
Tyson: Yes! I just might. [LAUGHS]
Bullock-Brown: Let me ask you a question that I'm sure some of our viewers may be wondering. That is, you are a white, southern man, who could. I guess, part of it is your upbringing and the fact that your father was a Methodist Preacher, but the question is why do you care about this topic? Why do you care about the fact that a 23 year old African American was killed in 1970? We are going to talk a little bit about Radio Free Dixie. Why do you care about Robert F. Williams and the roots of Black Power? Where are you coming from on that? Explain that.
Tyson: The whole world loves African American culture and history if you think about it. The gospels and the spirituals and jazz and the blues and hip hop and slam dunks. Everybody in the whole world is interested in this because it is rich. I'm interested in the dignity of human personality. And because of what Martin Luther King called the thingafication of human beings-that was at the heart of the African American historical experience was the thingafication. When you say African American, you are saying that, because these people were treated as things. That is the problem of the whole world in many ways. I think African American history and culture speaks to the human dilemma in the most profound and powerful way that it can be said, in so many ways. I find it fascinating and healing and complicated and rich. I also will say that it has to do with my family. People always say, "Why do you.?" I say, "What kind of world do you want your children growing up in? My children are going to grow up in the world that I leave to them-that we leave to them." There are a lot of people in this country who are trying to create a kind of Latin American world where the mostly white elite is in the high tower with the private security force, and the poor, who are mostly dark skinned, by this enormous coincidence, are scrambling around outside trying to stay alive. That is not the world that I imagine Hope and Sam Tyson growing up in. I want them growing up in a vibrant democracy. And until we deal with our race situation, we cannot have that kind of vibrant democracy. I feel that I have a stake in this and that we all do.
Bullock-Brown: Absolutely. I want to read something that you wrote in Blood Done Sign My Name that speaks to. It seems like a realization that you came to regarding Civil Rights. You write, on page 70, that, "While the televised drama played out perfectly, Birmingham could not be reduced to an epic struggle between pure non-violence and bare-fanged evil. King and his organizers were committed to non-violence, but their strategy depended on provoking violence against demonstrators." I'm going to repeat that, "Their strategy depended on provoking violence against demonstrators. And those the SCLC taught non-violence and begged those who cannot accept non-violent discipline to stay home, black bystanders often pelted police with 'non-violent rocks, bricks and bottles,' which helped prod Conner's cops into stupid overreactions that played to King's advantage in the media." Now, some people, if they are reading that or hearing that might think, "Okay. He's wrong. They were non-violent. They weren't trying to provoke anything." What, about your research, and just growing up in Oxford and your experiences brings you to write something like this? What does it mean?
Tyson: I grew up in this little race war, but then I heard about Martin Luther King and non-violence. I found this very inspirational and I still do. But you have to understand how it really worked. The idea-it wasn't that black southerners were somehow inherently passive or that non-violence had deep roots in African American culture, though, that is complicated. It was that there was a strategy that worked. If we march down the streets of Birmingham, they are going to put the dogs on us. They are going to spray us with fire hoses. They are going to hit us with clubs. But they are going to do this on television. It is going to expose this to the whole world, and that is going to force the Federal government to intervene. That was really the political strategy at the heart of non-violence. This is not to disparage anybody's commitment to non-violence, but it wasn't as if black southerners were somehow inherently passive. It was that they had come up with a brilliant, hard-headed political strategy that worked. But just because somebody was willing to march on Sunday afternoon, and get hit in the head on TV, because they believed in freedom and because they were willing to stand up for it, does not mean that on Saturday night you could go to their house and break in and do what you wanted. Black southerners were armed to the teeth. There was always that other march over there-the people who weren't in the march who saw that brutality and were unable to contain their rage. Nine blocks of Birmingham were burned to the ground. Police cars were overturned. There was a huge riot in Birmingham when Dr. King was there. Those people in that riot loved Dr. King and admired Dr. King, but they couldn't go with that non-violence. We have tried to create, in our memories, a kind of Civil Rights Movement that is more clean and pristine and well-behaved and that everyone can now agree that we approve of. In fact, it was complicated, it was difficult and it was dangerous. Not everybody. People opposed it.
Bullock-Brown: I want to segue to Radio Free Dixie, because we know about Martin Luther King. Most of us have heard about Martin Luther King. Most of us have heard about the Black Panther Party. Most of us have heard those names that we think of when we hear Civil Rights Movement or Black Radicalism. But how many people have heard about Robert F. Williams? I just want to show the book, Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of Black Power. Why is he significant? What do we need to know about him?
Tyson: Robert Williams was world famous in 1959, 1960 and 1961. When he came back to the United States in 1969, it was the lead story on Walter Cronkite. But we've forgotten Robert Williams, because he doesn't fit into the myth. In 1959 he advocated armed self-defense. They had a rampaging Klan in Monroe, North Carolina that was shooting into people's houses and attacking people. Robert Williams had organized an NAACP chapter that was armed.
Bullock-Brown: In Monroe?
Tyson: This was much more common that people realize. Martin Luther King, when he began in Montgomery, had armed guards. Medgar Evers kept a gun in every room in his house. Fanny Lou Hamer, a staunch non-violent, but she kept guns to protect herself at home. This was actually quite common. Black southerners, then, as now, often had guns in the home-hunting guns and stuff. They protected themselves. The difference between Williams and most of the others is that he wouldn't shut up about it. He let them know, "We are ready." He thought that that was a deterrent to violence. And of course, if he had been a white man, people would not have considered that particularly unusual. Most people believe in their right to defend themselves and their families in their own homes. But when he acted as an equal in that way to a white man, all of a sudden, it was hugely controversial. He ended up having to leave the United States in 1961 and went to Cuba. He had a radio show called Radio Free Dixie, hence the title.
Bullock-Brown: Well, native son of North Carolina, Tim Tyson, we are so honored to have you on the show. We wish you all the best with your books. If you would like a transcript of tonight's program and information on tonight's guest, Tim Tyson, visit us online at www.unctv.org/bif. Or call us at 919-549-7167. Be sure to join us every Friday night at 9:30 for more stimulating discussion. For Black Issues Forum, I'm Natalie Bullock-Brown, reminding you to be encouraged no matter what. Good night.
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Voiceover: Funding for this program is made possible in part by UNC-TV members.
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