The South had lost the Civil War and was losing its soul. Uniformed Rebels who had fought honorably in the light of day now wore tattered sheets in the dark and burned crosses. In armed packs they dragged the helpless Negro or Indian from his bed and stopped his hurried prayers with noose or buckshot. In North Carolina’s Robeson county, the Ku Klux did not see the vengeance it was stirring up: Henry Berry Lowery’s gang of Swamp Outlaws, who ruthlessly protected themselves and the county’s Indians and Negroes. ‘We kill anyone who hunts us, from Sheriff on down, ” Lowery promised, and by forays out of the swamps to keep that promise he became the highest-bountied outlaw in the nation’s history. This tale of bloody revenge and brilliant survival is drawn from the gang’s real victims, benefactors, and descendants – all as told by the Yankee reporter from the New York Herald who joined the gang to get the story.
Circa l’autore
David Ball is the award-winning novelist, screenwriter, and playwright whose work has been staged at major theater centers across the country including the Guthrie in Minneapolis, the American Repertory Theater at Harvard, Berkeley Rep, Pittsburgh’s Metro, the Actors Theater of Louisville, Theater de la Jeune Lune, and off-Broadway. At Lawrence, Carnegie Mellon, and Duke Universities he trained actors, directors, and writers who have gone on to win Tony awards, Oscars, and Emmies. His landmark Backwards and Forwards is theater’s best-selling training book. He is also the nation’s most influential jury and trial consultant, and the author of three best-selling trial advocacy books. He served in the Peace Corps (Afghanistan), is trained in science and engineering as well as in literature and theater, his favorite job was as taxi-driver in Connecticut and New York City, his mom was an American antiquities expert, and his Daddy was a Catskill Mountain bootlegger. David Ball lives in Durham, North Carolina.