NC Author and Historian Tim Tyson Teaches College Students About the African-American Experience in the South
In a 2010 rousing presentation, Timothy Tyson, American historian and author of “Blood Done Sign My Name,” formerly a Professor of African-American Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, now at Duke University; his father, the late Rev. Vernon Tyson, and Gospel vocalist Mary D. Williams participated in a convocation at the University of North Carolina, Asheville. Dr. Tyson sought to explain why “this crazy white boy from eastern North Carolina got all eaten up with African-American history and culture.”
Dr. Tyson was speaking at a profoundly optimistic moment, less than two years after a powerful grassroots democracy movement elected Barack Obama President of the United States in 2008, before the backlash in which Republicans won the 2010 midterm elections. He spoke as the Arab Spring was spreading around the region, from Tunisia to Egypt to Libya to Syria to the Gulf States, inspired in part by the American civil rights movement and the words of Martin Luther King Jr as well as Obama. But the Arab Spring was crushed by 2013, and Obama was frustrated by the lack of cooperation from the Republican Congress.
Even so, the video and the transcript are worth revisiting to realize where we were then and where we are now.
Excerpts:
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Slender Threads / Global Citizens / Public History to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.