Phil Lamar

I'm white, so my opinion is biased, but to me, our country has made great strides in accepting people who are different, but we still have a ways to go. I hate to see us going backwards, which I believe is happening now with the Trumpsters. It would be nice if, on our 250th anniversary, we could celebrate for all Americans, and not just for a select group.

Wyatt Outlaw was a Black American hero that history has tried to forget. I’m trying to get my new novel, The Short Happy Life of Wyatt Outlaw, listed on AALBC but so far haven’t figured out how. It’s available on am*zon, B&N, Ingrams, and other sources. Little is known about Wyatt Outlaw’s life, but his tragic death is well documented. My novel imagines Wyatt Outlaw as a son, husband, and father. The novel is framed with the murderous events that occur in Graham, North Carolina, on February 26, 1870. The atmosphere is thick with political tension and impending violence. Wyatt Outlaw, a Black town commissioner, master carpenter, and Union veteran, is marked for death by the White Brotherhood and KKK. Born the unacknowledged son of a white planter and an enslaved mother, Wyatt is sold to protect his father's fragile public image. After years of working as a slave on a tobacco farm and then being brutally beaten by a patroller or “pattyroller,” Wyatt's world improves when he meets Rachel. Because marriage is forbidden for slaves, their romance culminates in a secret jumping-the-broom ceremony. They begin a family, but when a violent clash with a pattyroller—to defend Rachel—forces Wyatt to make an impossible choice to flee North, he joins the United States Colored Cavalry to fight against the system that enslaved him. Following the Civil War, Wyatt returns to Graham a free man and a proud combat veteran. With the help of his strong mother, who takes care of his three sons, Wyatt attempts to create harmony out of the ashes of the Civil War. He builds a successful woodworking business. He is appointed town commissioner and becomes a leader in the Union League, working to forge a political alliance between newly enfranchised Black voters and poor white farmers. But this coalition is a threat to the old Southern aristocracy, and the planter class unleashes the White Brotherhood and KKK to crush Wyatt’s organizing efforts through terror, triggering a ticking-clock countdown leading to the Kirk-Holden War. The narrative is followed by a Book Club Discussion Guide that offers readers and book club groups a profound look at what it costs to build a family and community when the world wants to forget you.

More than anything, my parents shaped my views growing up, but after a certain age it was school and reading. My parents were religious and not racist, and I don't recall ever hearing the "N" word from them, but they grew up poor in the South, with separate water fountains and facilities. They held distinct views about minorities, especially Black people. Our humble home was right next to what my parents called a "colored" neighborhood. So I frequently saw colored kids but was not allowed to play with them (and I don't think they wanted to play with me). There was only one colored girl in my high school class of 400. As I became a teenager and exposed to the news on TV and reading, I realized there was something fundamentally wrong with our society. Now that I'm am older white man, I see our country recently going backwards towards more unacceptance and hatred of others, especially minorities. It’s scary. To me, MAGA means pull minorities down or send them home to make some white majority greater. That's one of the reasons I wrote my novel, The Short Happy Life of Wyatt Outlaw. It tells the tragic story of an enslaved man that history wants to forget. The novel is framed with the murderous events that occur in Graham, North Carolina, on February 26, 1870. The atmosphere is thick with political tension and impending violence. Wyatt Outlaw, a Black town commissioner, master carpenter, and Union veteran, is marked for death by the White Brotherhood and KKK. To me, Wyatt Outlaw is a hero who overcame great odds to become successful. To me, our country has made great strides in accepting people who are different, but we still have a ways to go. I hate to see us going backwards. It would be nice if, on our 250th anniversary, we could celebrate for all Americans, and not just for a select group.