Silver Rights vs. Blood Done Sign My Name: Race and Justice

Introduction: Two Narratives of Racial Injustice

Both Constance Curry's Silver Rights and Tim Tyson's Blood Done Sign My Name are nonfiction narratives centered on mob violence and racial hatred in the American South. Yet the two books arrive at strikingly different conclusions. Curry's story is a testament to the ability of the human spirit to overcome racism and mistrust, while Tyson's is an account of how violence begets violence. Both are unsentimental in showing how racism can foster brutality. In the case of Silver Rights, however, the determination of the Carter family to secure the best available education for their children — an entitlement guaranteed by law — ultimately makes the tale a triumph. In the case of Blood Done Sign My Name, the author's investigation of a long-unresolved crime becomes a tragic study of how African-Americans in North Carolina, long socially and legally oppressed, eventually turned to street violence after the justice system failed them.

Silver Rights and the Carter Family's Struggle for Education

Silver Rights grapples directly with the complicity of the state legal system in African-American disenfranchisement. When Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was enacted, it prohibited "discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin in programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance," and its implications for student education were profound. In an attempt to circumvent the strictures of federal law, the state government of Mississippi passed a "Freedom of Choice" law. To preserve de facto — if not de jure — segregation, county officials asked parents to sign papers designating which schools they wanted their children to attend. "The Carters were the only African-American parents in Sunflower County who dared to choose the white schools of the Mississippi Delta," which happened to be the best local schools in the state ("Silver Rights Book Tour Begins in Clarksdale," 1995, The Southern Register).

For Curry, a white Quaker activist, the Carters' decision embodies what she calls the Silver Rights movement. The movement takes its name from the fact that uneducated Black Southerners often misheard "civil rights" as "silver rights." Bertha Mae and Matthew Carter were sharecroppers with no economic opportunities or formal education, yet they were determined that their children would obtain their civil rights — their silver rights — in the form of economic mobility through education. "Eventually, seven of the Carter children graduated from the University of Mississippi, including Deborah Carter Smith, who is an accountant in the grants and contracts office at Ole Miss" ("Silver Rights Book Tour Begins in Clarksdale," 1995, The Southern Register).

The Concept of Silver Rights: Economic and Political Empowerment

The phrase "silver rights" has endured as a code term for the fusion of economic and political empowerment — the translation of political and educational opportunity into upward mobility. When a summit was held on inner-city financial literacy, it was described in The Wall Street Journal as follows: "Borrowing a page from the civil rights movement, Washington, D.C., is hosting a summit on silver rights — financial literacy and access to capital — for poor inner-city communities" (Roberts, 2006). The persistence of this language reflects how the goals articulated by the civil rights movement remained unfinished long after the landmark legislation of the 1960s.

Conclusion: Justice Delayed and Its Human Cost

At least Tyson himself, an adolescent during the riots, channeled his experiences constructively. He was friends with the son of the man who committed the murder, yet today he is a professor of African-American studies, still working to understand the complex interplay between race and community relations in America. "The story has been burning in my brain since I was eleven years old," Tyson stated in an interview ("Tim Tyson — Audio Interview," 2004, Eye on Books). His intellectual reckoning with a crime he witnessed as a child mirrors the broader challenge both books pose to their readers: to sit with the discomfort of racial history and to ask whether justice was ever truly served.

References

Primary Sources

Curry, Constance. (1996). Silver Rights. New York: Harvest.

Tyson, Tim. (2004). Blood Done Sign My Name. New York: Crown Books.

Interviews

"Tim Tyson, 'Blood Done Sign My Name.'" (10 Nov 2004). NPR: Morning Edition. Retrieved 6 Nov 2007. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4162533

"Tim Tyson — Audio Interview." (2004). Eye on Books. Retrieved 6 Nov 2007 at http://www.eyeonbooks.com/ibp.php?ISBN=[redacted]

Journals

Winkler, Eugene H. (2 Nov 2004). "Blood Done Sign My Name." Christian Century. Retrieved 6 Nov 2007.

Newspapers

Roberts, Shearon. (28 Apr 2006). "Advocating for Silver Rights." The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 6 Nov 2007.

"Silver Rights Book Tour Begins in Clarksdale." (27 Nov 1995). The Southern Register. Retrieved 6 Nov 2007 at http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/south/register/95/fall/silverr.html

Websites

"Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964: 42 U.S.C. 2000d." (2007). U.S. Department of Justice: Civil Rights Division. Retrieved 6 Nov 2007 at http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/cor/coord/titlevi.htm