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Local author Tim Tyson's best-selling memoir "Blood Done Sign My Name," published in 2004, has been adapted for the stage by playwright and actor Mike Wiley.
Wiley's adaptation brings to life Tyson's story of his hometown of Oxford in 1970, when his father, the Rev. Vernon Tyson, was pastor of Oxford United Methodist Church in the small Granville County town.
Both Tyson's book and the play focus on the racially motivated murder of a 23-year-old black U.S. Army veteran and the resulting social upheaval, including riots, boycotts, marches and the burning of two tobacco warehouses.
The book has won numerous honors, including the Southern Book Critics Circle Award and the prestigious Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Religion in 2006. Filming for a Hollywood adaptation of the memoir was done last summer in and around Charlotte. The film is still in production and is scheduled for release in 2009.
Tyson is a senior scholar and adjunct professor of divinity and history at Duke University.
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