Three years ago, I visited Graham, North Carolina, to research my family roots at the Oak Grove Plantation (now the Alamance County Historical Museum) in Alamance County. My Holt family line, whose name I still carry, was enslaved there from at least 1760 to 1865 (according to documented records). During my research, I found that the town of Graham has a history that is more interesting than any fictionalized account of the Reconstruction era I have ever heard. This is a story that must be told. It would make a great book. Thankfully, authors Sylvester Allen and Belle Boggs have researched the history of that region, and we now have access to a Reconstruction story that is both heartbreaking and inspiring.
The new book, The Legend of Wyatt Outlaw: From Reconstruction Through Black Lives Matter, is about the heroic and tragic murder (assassination) of the first Black Town Constable, and commissioner of Graham, as appointed by the governor of North Carolina, William Holden. Wyatt was an important man in Graham during the tumultuous Reconstruction era. However, Wyatt was still very successful. He ran a carpentry shop, built coffins, and ran a pub. He was a political activist leading a group he founded, the Alamance Loyal League. His political activism is what got him in the most trouble.
The Ku Klux Klan decided to end his influence in the region, and in 1870, they broke into his home, kidnapped and tortured him, and lynched him in a tree, a stone’s throw away from the courthouse. His murder prompted the Governor of North Carolina to declare Alamance and Caswell counties were in a state of insurrection. He sent federal troops to occupy the counties to protect freedmen, and those who supported the Republican party, and, most importantly, to nullify the Ku Klux Klan’s influence and the violence they created. The Skirmish between the KKK and federal troops was called the Kirk-Holden War. Governor Holden was the first American governor to be successfully impeached, due in part to his attack on the KKK.
The book is a detailed and engaging account of an essential piece of history that even local people know very little about. In its four-part, 21-chapter framework, the authors tell the story of Wyatt Outlaw, framed on topics such as Home and Family Legacy. Boggs and Allen surround the almost-mythical Wyatt Outlaw with the gritty, too-real social, political, and racial climate of the time. Someone would think you made up this story: A commissioned Black law officer with two armed Black deputies patrolling the streets and enforcing government-ordered curfew in a racist southern town at the end of the Civil War. What could go wrong?
The town of Graham hovers over the book like a dark cloud. The large Confederate statue in front of the courthouse, surrounded by a gate, is mentioned several times throughout the book. No matter how much progress was made by African Americans in the past 250 years, the presence of that statue reminds us that Graham has yet to overcome its racist past. Sylvester Allen grew up in Graham. His words about his upbringing and childhood carry a lot of weight in meaning and emotion. Maybe bittersweet. Graham seems like a tiny nook in time, tucked away while the rest of the world develops without it. It is a place that does not feel comfortable. And it starts with that damn statue. Allen’s words, though not directly disparaging his hometown, make it clear that growing up there was not always pleasant, and make it clear that there’s still a lot of work to be done there.
By covering Reconstruction through the Black Lives Matter era, the connections between what happened 150 years ago and today are strangely mirrored. We are still fighting through the same threats as Wyatt Outlaw had to confront; We still experience vigilante acts such as the murder of Ahmaud Arbery. The backlash we suffered after gaining freedom during Reconstruction is the same backlash we are still going through during the post-Obama years. During reconstruction, we gained the right to vote under the 15th Amendment, but poll taxes, literacy tests, and violence suppressed the Black vote for decades. However, today we have gerrymandering, redistricting, and limiting mail-in ballots. Other old tactics outlined by Allen and Boggs are the erosion of federal rights, disinformation (in newspapers), and violence, all of which are the exact issues we are currently dealing with. Allen and Boggs demonstrate that the problems Wyatt Outlaw encountered were part of a massive systemic backlash against Black political power that was gaining momentum at the end of the Civil War. This backlash is continuing today.
I highly recommend this book. The importance of spreading this story is best said by the words of Sylvester and Belle from the book:
Sylvester Allen
“I’m not even sure I was meant to feel at home in classrooms that were supposed to educate me. Hardly any of my teachers were Black, and we barely learned about the accomplishments of or the significance of people who looked like me.”
Belle Boggs
“But I never read a novel set in the South during the time period just after the Civil War. I never learned about a single Black hero or Black victim of Reconstruction, so I had nothing in my mind to counter the dominant narrative.”
Black Graham Citizen
“I was educated here, and I never heard any of these stories in school.”
I met Belle Boggs three years ago when she and Sylvester Allen were working on The Legend of Wyatt Outlaw. She took my wife, daughter, and grandson, along with me, on an impromptu historical tour of downtown Graham. After the tour, I was shocked. Why is this not in the history books? The life of Wyatt Outlaw is an essential and hidden part of not just the history of the region but also of the United States. Belle and Sylvester gave me the honor of including my essay in their book about my ancestral roots in Alamance County and my 3rd great-grand uncle, Caswell Holt, who was one of the Black Deputies of Wyatt Outlaw, and who was tortured by the KKK several times, and yet lived to a ripe old age.
Editor’s note: Thomas Holt Russell is the founder and director of SEMtech, an educator, photographer, modern-day Luddite, Existentialist, and Secular Humanist. For more information, visit http://thomasholtrussell.zenfolio.com/
