Drew A. Swanson, "A Man of Bad Reputation: The Murder of John Stephens and the Contested Landscape of North Carolina Reconstruction" (UNC Press, 2023)

New Books in African American Studies · Nov 4, 2023 · 58m

Five years after the Civil War, North Carolina Republican state senator John W. Stephens was found murdered inside the Caswell County Courthouse. Stephens fought for the rights of freedpeople, and his killing by the Ku Klux Klan ultimately led to insurrection, Governor William W. Holden's impeachment, and the early unwinding of Reconstruction in North Carolina. In A Man of Bad Reputation: The Murder of John Stephens and the Contested Landscape of North Carolina Reconstruction (UNC Press, 2023), Drew A. Swanson tells a story of race, politics, and social power shaped by violence and profit…