Blood Done Sign My Name Analysis
Thirty years after hearing a 10 year old playmate casually announce: "Daddy and Roger and 'em shot 'em a nigger," Tyson examines the racial conflict and riots that took place in the spring of 1970 in Oxford, North Carolina, while also looking at the culture that allowed such an event to take place and that allowed Robert and Roger Teel to be acquitted of both murder and manslaughter charges. The same tensions of racial conflict and desegregation that existed in Oxford were a reflection of those being felt throughout North Carolina and the rest of the South. Blood Done Sign My Name explores the motivation behind Marrow’s death and the riots afterwards.