Tyson’s role in the book is rare among authors. He is a professional historian who also happens to be a partial eyewitness to the events he describes. In this sense, Tyson provides readers with both a history and an autobiography.

Tyson is 10 years old on May 12, 1970, when his friend Gerald Teel casually announces that “Daddy and Roger and ’em shot ’em a n*****” (1). This is the moment to which Tyson traces the subsequent and most important events of his life, including his decision to become a historian of race and civil rights. Tyson recalls seeing Klansmen on the porch at Robert Teel’s house. He also remembers sirens and flames at night, as well as shattered glass on the walk to school in the morning. Though he did not understand it at the time, Tyson reflects on what it was like to live in a society that took white supremacy for granted.

As a child, of course, Tyson played no meaningful role in the events that rocked Oxford, North Carolina beginning in May 1970. Much of the narrative, therefore, comes from research, including interviews conducted many years later.

Only in the book’s final two chapters does Tyson become the center of the narrative.