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One Community, One Book Blood Done Sign My Name by Timothy B

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One Community, One Book Blood Done Sign My Name by Timothy B One Community, One Book Blood Done Sign My Name by Timothy B. Tyson SUGGESTED DISCUSSION QUESTIONS At this time, the beginning of the 21st Century, we celebrate the largely peaceful movement that led to racial desegregation in the United States. History lessons teach us that heroes such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks were able to change the face of America largely through their non-violent activism. Indeed, the government website devoted to MLK Day states, ―[Dr. King‘s] philosophy of nonviolent direct action, and his strategies for rational and non-destructive social change, galvanized the conscience of this nation and reordered its priorities. His wisdom, his words, his actions, his commitment, and his dream for a new way of life are intertwined with the American experience.‖ But Timothy Tyson, the author of Blood Done Sign My Name, pushes us to understand the true history of the movement for racial equality in the United States. Far from comfortably embracing the fundamental human rights of all persons, it was fraught with human rights violations from both sides of the color line and at every juncture. Blood Done Sign My Name is an honest account of the struggle for racial equality in the American South, and, as Tyson states, it is an attempt to ―transcend our history‖ by confronting the truth about how African Americans finally won their freedom. The framework of the post-World War II movement for international human rights provides a useful guide to understanding this complex and complicated history. Beginning with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) adopted by the UN General Assembly on Dec. 10, 1948 and signed by the United States, prohibitions of slavery and unequal treatment of others based on race, color, ethnicity, and religion became increasingly matters of official international legal policy. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), each adopted in 1966 and each ratified by the United States, are widely accepted and legally binding treaties that reinforce the inherent dignity and equality of human beings as enshrined in the UDHR. Both the Covenant and the Convention prohibit differential treatment on the basis of race, color, descent, or ethnic origin, and each requires their States Parties to ensure the equal enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms regardless of race or ethnicity. 1. Article 26 of the UDHR states that ―[e]veryone has the right to education.‖ In addition, the United States Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed segregation in U.S. schools and public places. The author says that the official history of Granville County, NC states that the schools undertook ―voluntary desegregation.‖ Yet, years later in 1970, schools in Oxford were still segregated despite the fact that the community was approximately 40% or nearly half African-American. In addition, children in the black schools had fewer textbooks than students in the white schools, and those that they did have were already used and might be several editions behind those in the white schools. What does this say about the federal law on 1 desegregation plus the right to education and its benefits described in the UDHR? Does this constitute differential treatment on the basis of race as prohibited by the ICCPR and the ICERD? 2. The Library Bill of Rights was adopted by the American Library Association on June 18, 1948, almost six months before the UDHR. Two of its provisions state that ―[m]aterials should not be excluded because of the origin, background, or views of those contributing to their creation‖ and that ―[a] person‘s right to use a library should not be denied because of origin, age, background or views.‖ On page 21, the author describes his mother‘s first visit to the Oxford Public Library when she tried to check out Jubilee by Margaret Walker, a black novelist and poet. The white librarian told his mother that she did not want to read that book and set it aside, checking it out to his mother only when she insisted that she did want to read the book. What does this unexpected attempt at censorship in the U.S. in the 1970s say about the culture of Oxford? Whose fundamental rights were being violated by the censorship? 3. The history of racial discrimination in America carries with it a subtext of gender discrimination as well. As the author notes on page 37, ―[s]egregation, I understood without even having to be told, existed to protect white womanhood from the abomination of contact with uncontrollable black men.‖ What stereotypes of women are played upon in this fear? Of black men? Can you think of images in the media, both then and now, that help to reinforce those stereotypes? Does the reinforcement of these stereotypes violate any human rights? 4. The author views the underlying motive for the murder of Henry ―Dickie‖ Marrow to be the fear of sex between black men and white women. He describes a 1662 statute passed in Virginia which reversed English common law and gave children the racial status of the mother. ―Free white men could father ‗black‘ slave children but black men could never father ‗white‘ children.‖ Therefore, if slave owners had children with slave women, they profited from the free labor of those slaves. How do these laws and practices reconcile with the UDHR principle that ―all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights‖? 5. At a march in Birmingham, Alabama described on page 70, the followers of Martin Luther King, Jr. were greeted by dogs and fire hoses authorized by the city‘s public safety officer, a noted segregationist. All of this was caught on television and aired nationwide. Article 5 of the UDHR says that ―no one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.‖ Would you classify the safety officer‘s action as such? Is it reasonable to believe that the safety officer might have believed that he was taking necessary action for the safety of the public as a whole? If not, why not? If so, how does one enforce UDHR Article 5? 6. The U.S. Constitution also contains several human rights provisions. The 14th Amendment states that the government cannot ―deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.‖ How then, was the Federal Bureau of Investigation able, upon ―hearing Dr. King‘s dream of racial reconciliation and equal 2 citizenship,‖ to launch a ―calculated effort to destroy King‘s personal life‖ and try ―to blackmail the eloquent young preacher into committing suicide‖ as described on page 106? Would any threat posed by Dr. King warrant this type of activity on behalf of the government? 7. The human rights framework protects not only civil and political rights, but socioeconomic and community rights also, e.g., the right to a ―standard of living adequate for health and well-being‖ and the ―right to a clean and healthy environment.‖ Why then, as described on page 142, did the city of Oxford neglect to pave the streets where black people lived and to enforce health and housing codes buildings rented by where African-Americans? The author notes that ―[s]ome of the houses rented to blacks had smelly, illegal outhouses that would not have been permitted in white neighborhoods.‖ Do these kinds of human rights violations in street maintenance and housing still exist in the United States? 8. International human rights law supports a right to just treatment even when one being subjected to legal discipline, including proportional punishment for perpetrators, redress for victims, and access to courts, hearings, and fair trials. Contrast this to what happened with the Teels who were not even taken to jail for several days after the killing of Mr. Marrow and their subsequent acquittal by an all white jury despite numerous eyewitness accounts of the murder. Would proper punishment of the Teels have prevented or minimized further human rights abuses during the struggle for racial equality? Would it have provoked yet greater racial discord? 9. In one passage on page 195, a parishioner comes to Tyson‘s uncle Earl‘s back door in the middle of the night to anonymously tell him she was proud he was her preacher. On another occasion, despite fierce opposition to the contrary, a white school teacher supports Vernon Tyson‘s proposal to invite a black preacher to give the Sunday sermon at the all-white Methodist church. What might have made these individuals speak up? What compels people to speak up for human rights when it is not popular to do so? Is it appropriate to remain silent in the face of racial injustice? 10. Article 20 of the UDHR states that ―everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.‖ The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. However, Article 4(b) of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination requires states to ―declare illegal and prohibit organizations, and also organized and all other propaganda activities, which promote and incite racial discrimination, and shall recognize participation in such organizations or activities as an offence punishable by law.‖ Are the U.S. Constitution and the ICERD in conflict? Should one trump the other and, if so, which one? The U.S. Constitution, it may be argued, permits hate speech. If this be correct, should the U.S. Constitution be further amended to prohibit hate speech? Why? Why not? Is there any reason why racially based hate speech should not be banned or severely restricted by a democratic society that professes racial harmony as a matter of fundamental public policy? Can competing claims to human rights be 3 balanced and, if so, how? Are there examples in the book of one type of human right winning out over another? 11.
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