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TIMOTHY B. TYSON RECEIVES 2021 NORTH CAROLINA AWARD FOR LITERATURE by Michele Walker COURTESY OF THE DEPT. OF NATURAL AND CULTURAL RESOURCES
‘Race Riot’ and the Rise of White Supremacy," which won the Excellence Award from the National Association of Black Journalists. Tyson's second book, Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams & the Roots of Black Power (1999), now slated to become a Hollywood movie, won major awards from the Organization of American Historians. Tyson’s work reflects his growing up in North Carolina. In his hometown of Oxford in 1970, three white TIMOTHY B. TYSON plumbs the history of race in men killed Henry Marrow, a young Black veteran, award-winning books, in the classroom, and in the in public but an all-white jury acquitted them. The public square. His unflinching look at the past helps incident inspired Tyson’s third book, Blood Done us move towards a better future. Tyson writes: “Loud Sign My Name (2004). Selected for the UNC Sumvoices have always demandmer Reading Program and the ed that we teach sanitized “ My work is a love letter to Southern Book Award, it was a histories, as if amnesia was finalist for the National Book North Carolina. Forces of love a cure rather than a disease. Critics Circle Award. Tar Heel and respect for humanity and History proves that neither equality and justice can win here. genius Mike Wiley adapted it ignorance nor innocence of for the stage and Jeb Stuart, It is possible. And that makes it the past will save us from its also a Tar Heel, directed a Holan exciting place where what we consequences. If there is to lywood adaptation. do matters.”—Timothy B. Tyson be reconciliation, first there In 2017, his fourth book, The must be truth.” Blood of Emmett Till, won the For his powerful works that explore the history of Robert F. Kennedy Book Award and was among ten race in America, Timothy B. Tyson receives the 2021 finalists for the National Book Award. North Carolina Award for Literature. “The history that matters is the history that ordiTim was born in Raleigh to Martha Tyson and Revnary citizens carry around in their heads,” Tyson erend Vernon Tyson. In 1971, the Tysons moved to says. His lasting works deepen our understanding, Wilmington. School integration ignited widespread spark public discussion, and help effect change. violence, including riots at Tim’s school. Beneath Tyson graduated from Emory University, earned this festered the city’s 1898 massacre, the overthrow his 1994 PhD at Duke and became Professor of of a biracial state government, and the disfranchiseAfro-American Studies at the University of Wisconment of Black voters by what their architects called sin. In 2005, he came home to teach at the Center the “White Supremacy Campaigns.” News & Observfor Documentary Studies at Duke, Durham Technier editor Josephus Daniels, termed these “permacal & Community College, and UNC Chapel Hill. He nent good government by the Party of the White serves on the executive board of the North CaroMan.” Tyson’s first book, Democracy Betrayed: The lina NAACP, Repairers of the Breach, and advisory Wilmington Race Riot of 1898 and Its Legacy, pubboards for VISIONS and the once and future UNC lished with David S. Cecelski, marked the centenCenter for Civil Rights. He lives in Durham with his nial. In 2006, the News & Observer published Tim’s wife, Perri Morgan. They have two adult children, sixteen-page insert, "Ghosts of 1898: Wilmington’s Hope and Sam, and two granddaughters. n
Watch the award ceremony here.
MICHELE WALKER is a Public Information Officer at the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
