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2017
NORTH CAROLINA L I T E R A R Y RE V I E W
COLLABORATORS BECOME CO-RECIPIENTS OF THE 2016 CHRISTOPHER CRITTENDEN MEMORIAL AWARD adapted from the presentation remarks North Carolina Literary and Historical Association meeting Raleigh, NC, 18 November 2016
PHOTOGRAPH BY LINDA FOX; COURTESY OF NC DEPARTMENTOF NATURAL AND CULTURAL RESOURCES
ABOVE David Cecelski giving his award acceptance remarks while ABOVE RIGHT Timothy Tyson waits his turn
PHOTOGRAPH BY LINDA FOX; COURTESY OF NC DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL AND CULTURAL RESOURCES
NCLR does not typically cover the Christopher Crittenden Memorial Award since it recognizes significant contributions by an individual or organization to the preservation of North Carolina history, and NCLR is a literary magazine. However, this year’s co-recipients, David Cecelski and Timothy Tyson, have both written for NCLR, so we do want to share news of their honor and express our congratulations. It is appropriate that the award was given to both of these recipients in the same year as they are friends, collaborators, and historians who excel at taking history beyond the classroom. They are the authors of several award-winning books and scores of articles about history, race, and culture. After co-editing Democracy Betrayed: The Wilmington Race Riot of 1898 and Its Legacy (1898), for example, they helped to organize a conference in Wilmington on the centennial anniversary, which was highlighted by a keynote address by John Hope Franklin. A native of Craven County, David Cecelski was educated at Duke and Harvard. His most recent book, The Fire of Freedom: Abraham Galloway and the Slave’s Civil War (2013; reviewed in NCLR Online 2013), was the product of over a decade of historical detective work. His other books include The Waterman’s Song and Along Freedom Road, and a collection of environmental history essays, A Historian’s Coast. He also co-edited (for Archives and History) a slave narrative, William Henry
Singleton’s Recollections of My Slavery Days. His oral history series, “Listening to History,” had a ten-year run in the Raleigh News & Observer. David has held several distinguished visiting professorships, including joint appointments in Documentary and American Studies at Duke University and UNC Chapel Hill and the Whichard Chair at East Carolina University. Timothy Tyson, raised in Oxford and the son of a Methodist minister, received his BA from Emory and his PhD from Duke. He is the Senior Research Scholar at the Center for Documentary Studies, Visiting Professor of American Christianity and Southern Culture at Duke Divinity School, and adjunct professor of American Studies at UNC Chapel Hill. For several years he, along with Mary Williams, has offered courses in Durham that bring to the community at large a colloquy about how Southerners, black and white, have interacted across the centuries. He is the author of the memoir Blood Done Sign My Name, and Radio Free Dixie. In 2006 he prepared an insert contextualizing the work of the Wilmington Race Riot Commission for newspapers across the state. In 2017, his latest book, The Blood of Emmett Till, appears. He serves on the executive board of the North Carolina NAACP. David Cecelski and Timothy Tyson have both won the North Caroliniana Award for the best book about North Carolina. Their work, imbued with a sense of social justice, informs, challenges, and sets a standard for those who follow behind. n