Abstract:
In 1870, members of the Ku Klux Klan murdered Wyatt Outlaw, an African-American town commissioner in Alamance County. The incident eventually led to the impeachment of Govern William Woods Holden over his handling of the situation. Outlaw was allegedly the son of a slave woman and Chesley Farrar Faucett, a rich white landowner. Outlaw was also a skilled craftsman, respected leader of the local community, a Union veteran and a politician. His murder was seen as a large setback for Reconstruction in North Carolina.