Commentary

IN MEMORIAM: Civil Rights Trailblazer Rev. Dr. Vernon Tyson Dies at 89

NNPA NEWSWIRE — “Vernon Tyson was like a father and bishop to me and the Moral Monday movement,” said the Rev. Dr. William Barber, the architect of the Forward Together Moral Monday Movement and president of the North Carolina Chapter of the NAACP. “Often his presence in our midst kept us focused and strong,” Barber said.

Published

5 years ago

January 1, 2019

Oakland Post

By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Correspondent
@StacyBrownMedia

The Rev. Dr. Vernon Tyson “hoped to become a peacemaker,” his son Tim wrote in the 2004 biography, “Blood Done Sign My Name.”

However, Tim Tyson said, “Daddy wanted the black freedom struggle to behave itself in a way that would help him reassure white people.”

In other words, Black people who turned radical in reaction to the radicalism of white supremacy during the Civil Rights Movement, “didn’t cater to my daddy’s desires.”

Instead, African Americans had to confront “that hate in the streets,” but also in their own souls, “to create a new black sense of self.”

On Saturday, Dec. 29, the elder Tyson, a retired United Methodist minister who worked in churches throughout North Carolina, died at his Raleigh home.

He was 89.

“I am saddened by the passing of Rev. Dr. Vernon C. Tyson, whose fight for social justice in North Carolina will be remembered for generations to come,” said North Carolina Democratic Congressman G.K. Butterfield.

“Vernon Tyson was like a father and bishop to me and the Moral Monday movement,” said the Rev. Dr. William Barber, the architect of the Forward Together Moral Monday Movement and president of the North Carolina Chapter of the NAACP. “Often his presence in our midst kept us focused and strong,” Barber said.

NNPA President and CEO Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis, Jr., also remarked on the passing of Tyson.

“I personally and the NNPA express our sincere condolences to the family of the Rev. Dr. Vernon Tyson. He was a fearless freedom fighter in the pulpits and on the streets of North Carolina,” Chavis said.

The Rev. Tyson’s work on racial reconciliation as a minister in Oxford was central to his son’s memoir, according to the News & Observer in Raleigh.

While the Civil Rights Movement was in full flower in the 1950s, “white backlash” marked much of the 1960s, and by 1970 the nation was still in deep conflict with the ideals of racial equality, the newspaper noted.

As Tyson wrote, “The sugar-coated confections that pass for the popular history of the civil rights movement offer outright lies” about the racism and prejudice embraced by most white Americans.

Back then, a lot of white people hated black people and made no bones about it.

Rev. Tyson’s first church appointment was in 1952, two years before the U.S. Supreme Court declared school segregation unconstitutional.

“Rosa Parks sat down, Martin Luther King stood up, and something shifted in America,” the Rev. Tyson has said, according to the News & Observer.

“I was caught on the front lines of that dilemma. So, it is that the struggles that I went through lots of people went through in my generation,” Rev. Tyson said.

“My story is really the story of people without number.”

Tim Tyson said he and his father often traveled together to talk about the book, and his father was on set for every day of shooting for a 2010 movie.

“My father has put a little bit of ink on every page I’ve ever published,” Tim Tyson told the newspaper on Saturday after his father died.

The Rev. Tyson worked at churches throughout the state, including in Chapel Hill, Sanford, and at Edenton Street United Methodist Church in Raleigh.

“Vernon was a great soul,” said Hope Morgan Ward, a bishop of the United Methodist Church.

“He was both a preacher and a prophet and a pastor,” she said.

“He was brave. He was strong. He was a wonderful husband, father and grandfather. He mentored many clergy, including myself.”

Tim Tyson said his father loved “a very broad range of people,” including those who disagreed with him.

“He taught us both with his words and with his example that you needed to have the courage to be a prophetic voice but that nobody can hear you scolding them. Nobody can hear you if they don’t understand that you love and respect them.”

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Commentary

Opinion: Lessons for Current Student Protesters From a San Francisco State Strike Veteran

How the nation’s first College of Ethnic studies came about, bringing together Latino, African American and Asian American disciplines may offer some clues as to how to ease the current turmoil on American college campuses over the Israel-Hamas war. After the deadline passed to end the Columbia University encampment by 2 p.m. Monday, student protesters blockaded and occupied Hamilton Hall in a symbolic move early Tuesday morning. Protesters did the same in 1968.

Published

2 days ago

May 3, 2024

Oakland Post

iStock Photo

By Emil Guillermo

After the deadline passed to end the Columbia University encampment by 2 p.m. Monday, student protesters blockaded and occupied Hamilton Hall in a symbolic move early Tuesday morning.

Protesters did the same in 1968.

That made me think of San Francisco State University, 1968.

The news was filled with call backs to practically every student protest in the past six decades as arrests mounted into hundreds on nearly two dozen campuses around the country.

In 1970, the protests at Kent State were over the Vietnam War. Ohio National Guardsmen came in, opened fire, and killed four students.

Less than two weeks later that year, civil rights activists outside a dormitory at Jackson State were confronted by armed police. Two African American students were killed, twelve injured.

But again, I didn’t hear anyone mention San Francisco State University, 1968.

That protest addressed all the issues of the day and more. The student strike at SFSU was against the Vietnam war.

That final goal was eventually achieved, but there was violence, sparked mostly by “outside agitators,” who were confronted by police.

“People used the term ‘off the pigs’ but it was more rally rhetoric than a call to action (to actually kill police),” said Daniel Phil Gonzales, who was one of the strikers in 1968.

Gonzales, known as the go-to resource among Filipino American scholars for decades, went on to teach at what was the positive outcome of the strike, San Francisco State University’s College of Ethnic Studies. It’s believed to be the first of its kind in the nation. Gonzales recently retired after more than 50 years as professor.

As for today’s protests, Gonzales is dismayed that the students have constantly dealt with charges of antisemitism.

“It stymies conversation and encourages further polarization and the possibility of violent confrontation,” he said. “You’re going to be labeled pro-Hamas or pro-terrorist.”

That’s happening now. But we forget we are dealing not with Hamas proxies. We are dealing with students.

Gonzales said that was a key lesson at SF State’s strike. The main coalition driving the strike was aided by self-policing from inside of the movement. “That’s very difficult to maintain. Once you start this kind of activity, you don’t know who’s going to join,” he said.

Gonzales believes that in the current situation, there is a patch of humanity, common ground, where one can be both pro-Palestine and pro-Israel. He said it’s made difficult if you stand against the belligerent policies of Benjamin Netanyahu. In that case, you’re likely to be labeled antisemitic.

Despite that, Gonzales is in solidarity with the protesters and the people of Gaza, generally. Not Hamas. And he sees how most of the young people protesting are in shock at what he called the “duration of the absolute inhumane kind of persecution and prosecution of the Palestinians carried out by the Israeli government.”

As a survivor of campus protest decades ago, Gonzales offered some advice to the student protesters of 2024.

“You have to have a definable goal, but right now the path to that goal is unclear,” he said.

About the Author

Emil Guillermo is a journalist and commentator. A veteran newsman in TV and print, he is a former host of NPR’s “All Things Considered.”