NCSU Libraries Focus Online
Volume 26 number 1 - Fall 2005
Friends of the Library--Historian Tim Tyson Featured Speaker
at 2005 Spring Dinner
By Marylu Lawrence, Friends of the Library
North Carolina native Timothy B. Tyson exuberantly addressed this
year’s annual Spring Dinner attendees, telling stories in
varied southern accents. Tyson read from his acclaimed book, Blood
Done Sign My Name, reflecting on passages that described his
parents’ impact on his intellectual development. The book
is a personal and historical account of a racial murder that occurred
in Oxford, North Carolina, when he was a young boy. Tyson’s
book explores the facts of the murder case and the racial turmoil
it spawned. Geoffrey Galt Harpham of the National Humanities Center
introduced Tyson.
Tyson received the 1999 Outstanding Book Award given by the Gustavus
Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights in North
America for his first book, Democracy Betrayed: The Wilmington
Race Riot of 1898 and Its Legacy. He later acquired two Organization
of American Historians awards, the James Rawley Prize and the Frederick
Jackson Turner Award, for Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams
and the Roots of Black Power. He was a 2004-2005 Fellow of
the National Humanities Center and currently is a visiting professor
of American Christianity and southern culture at the Duke Divinity
School and senior research scholar at the Center for Documentary
Studies at Duke University.
Suzanne Purrington, president of the Friends of the Library Board
of Directors, opened the Spring Dinner festivities. Faculty Senate
Chair Dennis Daley greeted the audience and Assad Meymandi, chair
of the board’s Nominating Committee, announced the election
of new and returning board members. Vice Provost and Director of
Libraries Susan K. Nutter reported on the induction of twenty-five
new life members and the establishment of fifteen library endowments
and four incubator library endowments. After Tyson’s speech
and a warm standing ovation, the audience enjoyed a dessert reception
and book signing.
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