Tuesday night at Stewart Theater, actor Michael Wiley performed his critically acclaimed one-man show based on a popular memoir detailing racially charged events during the Civil Right era.
Wiley brought “Blood Done Sign My Name,” Tim Tyson’s memoir about a 1970 murder and subsequent public unrest in Oxford, to the stage for several hundred attendees. Gospel singer Mary D. Williams provided backing vocals and hymns during the production.
University Scholars and the Office of Diversity and Inclusion co-sponsored the event.
Wiley said he is always happy to perform Blood Done Sign My Name for college students, because it’s a part of history that they should know about before they leave college and enter the adult world.
“I think it’s important that students of all ages, especially college students, look to this recent history to make ties to current socioeconomic problems, political policies, the widening of the achievement gap,” Wiley explained.
During the performance, Wiley estimated he plays about 20 characters, among them: Tyson, Tyson’s father, a 10-year-old white boy, a white racist secretary, and a black Civil Rights activist trying to call attention to the killing and trial. Other than Williams and Wiley, the stage featured just a few props and a video screen that flashed pictures and news clippings relevant to the events in the play.
The story centered on the murder of Henry “Dickie” Marrow, a black Vietnam veteran who was gunned down in the streets of Oxford. Three white men stood trial for the crime: Robert Teel, his 18-year-old son and his 21-year-old stepson.
Despite testimony from a pair of black eyewitnesses, an all-white jury acquitted the three men, setting off a series of marches, boycotts, and riots; two tobacco warehouses burned during the unrest, and glass from shattered storefronts littered the streets of Oxford.
The event is credited with galvanizing the Civil Rights movement in Granville County. It also nearly tore the town apart, however, as the trial brought out both angry black protestors and white supremacists (most notably the Ku Klux Klan) that showed public support for Teel and his sons.
Wiley’s treatment of the material has earned high praise from Tyson.
“Mike is a brilliant artist and educator. This [story] is about mending the broken world through the power of story … I am proud to have Mike as a colleague in those efforts,” Tyson said in a statement.
While entertaining drama is the main goal of the performance, Wiley takes the “educator” role Tyson mentioned very seriously.
“I hope the play helped them really understand how we’ve gotten to this place as a society – the positive and the negative,” he said.
“We’ve trudged over some really deep and treacherous waters to get here, but we still have many more miles to swim,” said Wiley. In terms of racial relations, Wiley said “we’ve done well as a society, but we’ve got so much more to do.”
Ashley Klein, a freshman in animal science and poultry science who lived in Oxford briefly, attended the play because one of her high school teachers had high praise for Tyson’s work.
“My teacher was always talking about the book, so I wanted to check this out,” Klein said.
Other students, like Corinne Fischer, attended the play because they had read the book in high school.
“I thought parts of the book were really shocking and graphic,” said Fischer, a sophomore in elementary education. “The actor [Wiley] was really entertaining and passionate. He changed his character and demeanor so often.”
After three years of schedule wrangling, University Scholars and Office of Diversity were finally able to get Blood Done … to N.C. State.
“We were delighted to bring the show to campus. It took a little while, but we’re excited that it finally happened,” said Ken Johnson, assistant director of the University Scholars Program.
Wiley first performed Blood Done … at Duke in 2008. Since then, he has taken the show on the road as far afield as Wisconsin and New Jersey, though most of the performances occur in-state. He’s performed Blood Done … at UNC-Chapel Hill, Wesleyan College, and even in Oxford multiple times.
The performance always gets s a stronger reaction when he performs it locally, Wiley said.
“The closer the performance is to Oxford, the more outrage and sadness the audience has,” he said. “Many people in the audience think ‘In my backyard? This happened just up the road and I did not know anything about it?'”
This lack of knowledge is not restricted to the events depicted in Blood Done …, Wiley said. He also performs a one-man show about Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black boy murdered in Mississippi under similar racially charged circumstances.
“I’ve performed the Till show in Mississippi; most of the time, when I ask people in their teens and 20s about it down there, most kids say ‘I’ve never heard about it.'”
Johnson said he hoped attendees left the show more informed about the Oxford incident – and entertained.
”There’s something to be said for attending a play, no matter what it is; but I also hope students and other attendees see the power and courage it takes to stand up for something,” said Johnson. “There’s a reason more people did not stand up [to racism] back then; it isn’t easy, and people are just terrified sometimes.”
“It was not just racism, but also fear, that ruled that era,” Johnson said.
The message was not lost on Klein, who expressed disbelief that something so tragic happened so close to campus so recently.
“It’s incredible that it only happened 40 years ago,” she said. “A lot has changed, but there’s still so much that has not changed in those 40 years.”