Also strikingly memorable are Tyson's descriptions of Oxford's severely outdated, still-rigidly restrictive racial attitudes. For instance, despite landmark Supreme Court decisions (e.g., Brown v. Board of Education) and the American Civil Rights Movement of the time, Tyson describes how time almost stands still in terms of lingering apartness of blacks and whites' being a well-established, unquestioned way of life. The swimming pool in the town was never integrated, for example; it was simply closed instead. The town will not catch up to society, setting the stage for Marrow's violent death and the town's severe under-reaction to it in terms of appropriate justice for the Teels.

Black-white relationships in Oxford, North Carolina as late as 1970, when the Marrow murder occurred, seem to have evolved little since the days of slavery. That alone creates the conditions of possibility for what happens and the town's reaction to it. Still, Tyson also shows...
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