A Most Special Prayer - Loving People & Using Things - Blood Done Sign My Name
Let us pray. Oh, Lord, we pray your blessing upon all those who lived and loved and labored in this place; for those who poured out their gifts on land that could never be their own; for women who birthed babies unattended; for children whose genius went unacknowledged; for all your children who cut cane and sweated in the hot sun, and knew in their bones there was a better place. And we ask your peace and your healing for those on this bus whose cheeks burn with tears and whose eyes have been seared by sights that hurt them deeply. We ask that these pains of love might bring a harder wisdom. And we ask your help, Lord, that we not become prejudiced against those who are prejudiced, or whose prejudices may not be our own. For we acknowledge and confess to you that we, too, like the men who once owned Destrehan Plantation, have been tempted to love things and use people, when you have called us to love people and use things. We ask your complicity in these evils, and in the evils of our own time, and pray your healing for our hearts. Thank you for the love that binds us one to another; and to our homes and families, and to you. (Vernon Tyson - Blood Done Sign My Name)
Sometimes you come upon something so beautiful that you have to share it. The above prayer was said by Rev. Vernon Tyson in 2001 to a group of college students (University of Wisconsin, Madison) who went on a two-week bus trip through the South. They visited battlefields of the African-American freedom struggle and met local people who helped overthrow old Jim Crow laws and practices. Vernon Tyson's son, Timothy Tyson, wrote "Blood Done Sign My Name," and the prayer appears in the Epilogue of his book.
The prayer speaks for itself, but one will appreciate it even more, if one understands the setting:
Black and white together, we rolled through Dixie, singing the songs of the movement and challenging ourselves to confront the deeper truths of American history. We held classes on the bus, on city sidewalks, in hotel lobbies, and at crowded soul food restaurants. Day after day, we met local movement organizers, toured slave markets and sugar plantations, heard great gospel singers, and talked with people whose memories of the movement made history walk and talk. Night after night, we huddled in hotel rooms and explored our deepest feelings about the meaning of race in America.
Tyson mentions Destrehan Plantation in his prayer. The prayer was said to the group by Tyson after they had visited the plantation:
I felt at peace with the heritage that had been both a blessing and a burden. This mixed blessing was never so clear as on that morning in New Orleans when our bus took us up the River Road to Destrehan Plantation in a driving rain. Those of us who had helped plan the trip knew this would be a hard visit. We had selected this place on purpose, knowing that our students would learn things here that were impossible to convey any other way.
Though my students and I had studied the grisly history of this place, nothing could have prepared us for what we found as we stepped off the bus beneath the spreading live oaks with their canopy of Spanish moss. Private investors had turned the plantation house, with its enormous columns and three-foot-thick brick foundations, into a monument to what one tour company's brochure called "the good old days" of the antebellum South. Young women in swirling skirts and sun bonnets greeted us at the door. The presence of a mixed-race group made them visibly uneasy. The tour included virtually no mention of slaves or slavery, let alone the 1811 revolt. A black handyman working outside told some of the students that the management had recently fired a young tour guide who'd insisted on talking about slavery. "Our guide's presentation was about prayer schools, parlors, ladies' portraits on the wall. tall ceilings, hand-carved banisters," one of the students wrote in his journal. "It was surreal."
After a few minutes, I looked out a window and saw one of the black students on her knees in front of the levee, her forehead pressed against the ground, pounding the grass with her outstretched palms. Many of us, especially the African American students, could not hold back tears of frustration and sorrow. It was hard for me, too, but I had seen this kind of thing before........ Before the tour ended, about half of the students were sitting in groups of two or three under the trees, many of them crying. I tried to stop Rhea Lathan, an African American student, as she headed down the walkway toward the bus. She waved me off and stomped past me, muttering, "There are bodies hanging all over these trees."
By the time we filled slowly back onto the bus, the whole group was emotionally devastated. I saw Daddy (Vernon Tyson) in the back of the bus talking with a teary-eyed Rhea. And then the broad-shouldered preacher stood up in the aisle and said to the silent busload of students, "Let us pray." And every head on the bus, atheist, agnostic, Christian, Jew, and Muslim bowed in unison.
What a scene. What a setting. What a prayer! I've listened to the book, Blood Done Sign My Name and I've watched the movie. I highly recommend both. The book "deals with the 1970 killing by whites of Henry Marrow, a 23-year-old black U.S. Army veteran in Oxford, North Carolina. The murder and acquittal of two suspects (Larry & Robert Teel) by an all-white jury resulted in arson and other violence, and blacks organized an 18-month boycott of white businesses in the mostly segregated town, to force change in public facilities. The case helped galvanize the African-American civil rights activities in Oxford and across the eastern North Carolina black belt."
As a native North Carolinian, this book spoke to me in so many ways. The author, Timothy Tyson, is about my age. This is his story. A story that he pursued when he became an adult. A story that he couldn't let go of, and ultimately, a story that helped shape his destiny. Timothy Tyson is white. He was 10 years old at the time of the murder and vividly remembers what his playmate, Gerald Teel, told him the morning after the killing, “Daddy and Roger and ’em shot ’em a nigger.”
In 2001, Timothy Tyson was a professor in the African-American studies department at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. In 2014, Tyson is a visiting Professor of American Christianity and Southern Culture at Duke University's Divinity School.
Thank You Tim for your tenacity and passion in pursuing this story and your life's mission. It's deeply appreciated.
Sometimes you come upon something so beautiful that you have to share it. The above prayer was said by Rev. Vernon Tyson in 2001 to a group of college students (University of Wisconsin, Madison) who went on a two-week bus trip through the South. They visited battlefields of the African-American freedom struggle and met local people who helped overthrow old Jim Crow laws and practices. Vernon Tyson's son, Timothy Tyson, wrote "Blood Done Sign My Name," and the prayer appears in the Epilogue of his book.
The prayer speaks for itself, but one will appreciate it even more, if one understands the setting:
Black and white together, we rolled through Dixie, singing the songs of the movement and challenging ourselves to confront the deeper truths of American history. We held classes on the bus, on city sidewalks, in hotel lobbies, and at crowded soul food restaurants. Day after day, we met local movement organizers, toured slave markets and sugar plantations, heard great gospel singers, and talked with people whose memories of the movement made history walk and talk. Night after night, we huddled in hotel rooms and explored our deepest feelings about the meaning of race in America.
Tyson mentions Destrehan Plantation in his prayer. The prayer was said to the group by Tyson after they had visited the plantation:
I felt at peace with the heritage that had been both a blessing and a burden. This mixed blessing was never so clear as on that morning in New Orleans when our bus took us up the River Road to Destrehan Plantation in a driving rain. Those of us who had helped plan the trip knew this would be a hard visit. We had selected this place on purpose, knowing that our students would learn things here that were impossible to convey any other way.
Though my students and I had studied the grisly history of this place, nothing could have prepared us for what we found as we stepped off the bus beneath the spreading live oaks with their canopy of Spanish moss. Private investors had turned the plantation house, with its enormous columns and three-foot-thick brick foundations, into a monument to what one tour company's brochure called "the good old days" of the antebellum South. Young women in swirling skirts and sun bonnets greeted us at the door. The presence of a mixed-race group made them visibly uneasy. The tour included virtually no mention of slaves or slavery, let alone the 1811 revolt. A black handyman working outside told some of the students that the management had recently fired a young tour guide who'd insisted on talking about slavery. "Our guide's presentation was about prayer schools, parlors, ladies' portraits on the wall. tall ceilings, hand-carved banisters," one of the students wrote in his journal. "It was surreal."
After a few minutes, I looked out a window and saw one of the black students on her knees in front of the levee, her forehead pressed against the ground, pounding the grass with her outstretched palms. Many of us, especially the African American students, could not hold back tears of frustration and sorrow. It was hard for me, too, but I had seen this kind of thing before........ Before the tour ended, about half of the students were sitting in groups of two or three under the trees, many of them crying. I tried to stop Rhea Lathan, an African American student, as she headed down the walkway toward the bus. She waved me off and stomped past me, muttering, "There are bodies hanging all over these trees."
By the time we filled slowly back onto the bus, the whole group was emotionally devastated. I saw Daddy (Vernon Tyson) in the back of the bus talking with a teary-eyed Rhea. And then the broad-shouldered preacher stood up in the aisle and said to the silent busload of students, "Let us pray." And every head on the bus, atheist, agnostic, Christian, Jew, and Muslim bowed in unison.
What a scene. What a setting. What a prayer! I've listened to the book, Blood Done Sign My Name and I've watched the movie. I highly recommend both. The book "deals with the 1970 killing by whites of Henry Marrow, a 23-year-old black U.S. Army veteran in Oxford, North Carolina. The murder and acquittal of two suspects (Larry & Robert Teel) by an all-white jury resulted in arson and other violence, and blacks organized an 18-month boycott of white businesses in the mostly segregated town, to force change in public facilities. The case helped galvanize the African-American civil rights activities in Oxford and across the eastern North Carolina black belt."
As a native North Carolinian, this book spoke to me in so many ways. The author, Timothy Tyson, is about my age. This is his story. A story that he pursued when he became an adult. A story that he couldn't let go of, and ultimately, a story that helped shape his destiny. Timothy Tyson is white. He was 10 years old at the time of the murder and vividly remembers what his playmate, Gerald Teel, told him the morning after the killing, “Daddy and Roger and ’em shot ’em a nigger.”
In 2001, Timothy Tyson was a professor in the African-American studies department at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. In 2014, Tyson is a visiting Professor of American Christianity and Southern Culture at Duke University's Divinity School.
Thank You Tim for your tenacity and passion in pursuing this story and your life's mission. It's deeply appreciated.
I agree that these are beautiful words. Thank you for posting. I was fortunate enough to see the play that was based on this book performed in Oxford some years ago. More recently, the playwright, Mike Wiley reworked the piece and it was produced at two different place in Raleigh. Dr. Tyson was directly involved in the development of this play; I hope it gets a wider distribution outside of its native state.
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