History’s depiction of the civil rights movement is sugarcoated, and the South has become one of the most important arenas for race and national debates, author Timothy Tyson said in a speech Monday.
Tyson, author of this year’s summer reading book, “Blood Done Sign My Name,” is a professor of Afro-American studies at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
He spoke in the Great Hall of the Student Union as part of the day for first-year students to attend group discussions about the book.
His talk covered issues of history and the South and touched on the efforts of Martin Luther King Jr.
“He was not just lighting a candle and singing a song,” Tyson said. “King is the one who said it is better to be violent than to be a coward.”
Every seat in the Great Hall was filled with students, teachers and other visitors as Tyson spoke about his research on the civil rights movement.
“I am not trying to say it was a military struggle,” he said. “But I am saying we remember it the way we want to.”
During the lecture, Tyson gave an expanded concept of King’s message by talking about his lesser-known speeches.
He also told the story of Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, who, before he was appointed to the Supreme Court, had two guards armed with shotguns follow him wherever he traveled in the South.
