Moving toward racial reconciliation in Oxford, N.C.

Kathy Watts

Tim Tyson found “a feeling of healing” when he returned to Oxford (N.C.) Church, where his father served during a time of racial unrest following the murder of a black man. Tyson chronicles the tragedy in his book Blood Done Sign My Name [Crown Publishers, (800) 733-3000].

“It’s been burning a hole in my head for 30 years,” Tim Tyson said. “It’s a history book. It’s what the Lord put me here to do.”

In 1970, white men with ties to the Ku Klux Klan killed Henry Marrow, a black veteran, in Oxford. The Rev. Vernon Tyson tried both to lead his white church and to reach out to the black community as tobacco warehouses went up in flames in protest of the killing and the lack of convictions by the all-white jury.

In September 2004, Granville County’s Human Relations Commission invited Tim Tyson to speak at its annual banquet, which was attended by more than 300 people. He spent the afternoon at his father’s old church.

Tyson’s return caused discomfort among some in the community, but he urged people to “lean into racial discomfort.”

“It gave the Oxford community a chance to wrestle with this ghost of its past publicly,” said Vernon Tyson, who has retired but is serving Center Church in Sanford, N.C.

He said he was not alone in facing the challenges of the 1960s and 1970s.

“It was the nature of the time,” the elder Tyson said. “It was our generation; it was our story.”

Tyson’s book places the tragedy in the context of racial unrest throughout the country. What happened in Oxford happened everywhere, Tyson said, “but you will not always find people who are willing to confront it.”

“I think there’s really a spirit of redemptive love moving in that community.”

This spring, St. Peter’s Church, Oxford Church and Timothy Darling United Presbyterian Church plan to join together in an interracial Disciple Bible Study.

The Rev. Chris Kudzai Chikoore, St. Peter’s pastor, still sees racial polarization: there are black and white clergy meetings in the community, for example. But he also sees progress. For two years, Oxford and St. Peter’s have held a joint Easter sunrise service and breakfast, and the pastors participate in a pulpit exchange each year. Oxford holds weekly homework help sessions for Hispanic children.

“The only thing that we have to shape our future out of is who we are,” Tyson said. “You don’t get out of bed in the morning and completely change who you are. You try to do a little better each day.”

Mary Catherine Chavis was Marrow’s distant cousin, and he lived at her home. “Even though it was a tragedy, some type of goodness tends to come from everything,” she said. “In many ways, the county is entirely different now. You wouldn’t have an all-white jury now.”

The murder made everyone confront the racial issues that surrounded them, said the Rev. Harrison Simons, who served three Episcopal churches in the area — two of which were black — just after the murder.

“If we take a mirror and look in it,” Chavis said, “you will see some things I’m not able to see. That book and visit has been a mirror to Oxford and Granville County. You use that mirror not in a negative sense but to keep you focused in the right direction.”

Human Relations Committee member Ben Williams said that blacks and whites continue to remain predominantly separate in social settings, and he would like to see a more authentic dialogue about race.

“I believe Tim’s book did a yeoman’s job of opening that up,” Williams said. He summarized questionnaire responses from the fall banquet to identify ways to bridge the divide.

“I don’t think an incident of that nature will ever happen again in Oxford,” Chavis said. “The price is too great for the guilty as well as the innocent.”

* Look for other Lenten forgiveness stories at www.umc.org .

--Kathy Watts is a freelance writer in Oxford, N.C., and a member of Oxford Church.