Death at Cross Plains: An Alabama Reconstruction Tragedy

Death at Cross Plains follows the tragic life and career of William Luke, a white Canadian minister who became a teacher at the HBCU Talladega College in 1869. Later taking the position of schoolteacher to Black railroad workers near Talladega, Luke became caught up in a web of racial antagonisms, xenophobia, and partisan conflict rampant that characterized the Reconstruction-era South.

Reconstruction in the South is a much studied and yet little understood period in the region’s history. In many areas it was marked by such violence as to have been guerrilla warfare in all but name. Death at Cross Plains is the gripping story of one local incident that illuminates the aftermath of the Civil War throughout the region.