A01=Belle Boggs
A01=Sylvester Allen Jr.
Alamance County NC
Albion Tourgee
Antiracist Activism in theSouth
Author_Belle Boggs
Author_Sylvester Allen Jr.
Black Lives Matter in North Carolina
Black Lives Matter in the South
Black testimony Reconstruction Era
Category=JBSL
Category=NHK
Category=NHTB
Category=WQH
Confederate Statues
Donald Trump and Insurrection
Down Home NC
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_new_release
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
George Floyd Protests
Graham NC
Grassroots Organizing in the South
Insurrection History
Joseph Long
Josiah Turner
Kirk-Holden War
Ku Klux Klan in North Carolina
Neo-Confederates
Protesting Police Violence
Reconstruction and Education
Reconstruction History of North Carolina
the Fourteenth Amendment
Third Reconstruction
Union Leagues in North Carolina
Voter Suppression in the South
Voting Rights and Reconstruction
William W. Holden
Wyatt Outlaw
Product details
- ISBN 9781469689999
- Dimensions: 25 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 27 Jan 2026
- Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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Wyatt Outlaw’s story was one of Black success: He was a Union League leader, business owner, and the first Black town constable and commissioner in Graham, a small town located in North Carolina’s Alamance County. But in 1870, Outlaw was murdered by the Ku Klux Klan, setting off a dramatic series of events: more lynchings, a Republican-led “war” against the Klan, and a white supremacist crackdown on Black political power that continues today. As a child, Black activist, musician, and Graham native Sylvester Allen frequently passed the site where Outlaw was killed without ever learning his name. Belle Boggs, white and also from the South, taught high school in Alamance County without knowing Outlaw’s importance.
Allen and Boggs both sought to discover why Outlaw had been erased from mainstream history books. In The Legend of Wyatt Outlaw, they share what they found in artful detail and connect Outlaw’s story to the violence against Black people in Alamance and throughout the United States, from Reconstruction through Jim Crow, the civil rights era, and Black Lives Matter. Drawing on archival research, interviews, and their own personal stories, Allen and Boggs join the conversation begun by historian Peniel Joseph and activist William Barber II about a third Reconstruction in America, but they also offer ways to move forward for any community struggling with a history of racism.
Allen and Boggs both sought to discover why Outlaw had been erased from mainstream history books. In The Legend of Wyatt Outlaw, they share what they found in artful detail and connect Outlaw’s story to the violence against Black people in Alamance and throughout the United States, from Reconstruction through Jim Crow, the civil rights era, and Black Lives Matter. Drawing on archival research, interviews, and their own personal stories, Allen and Boggs join the conversation begun by historian Peniel Joseph and activist William Barber II about a third Reconstruction in America, but they also offer ways to move forward for any community struggling with a history of racism.
Sylvester Allen Jr. is a writer, composer, and director based in Graham, North Carolina. Belle Boggs is professor of English at North Carolina State University, and author of several books, including The Gulf and The Art of Waiting: On Fertility, Medicine, and Motherhood.
