A native of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, Waldrep taught in the Washington City School system (Ohio) for sixteen years before joining the faculty at Eastern in 1990. He is the author of Night Riders: Defending Community in the Black Patch: 1890–1915 (1993). He also published twenty-four articles in professional journals, including the Journal of Southern History, Journal of American History, and the American Historical Review. He is now finishing a book entitled Roots of Disorder: Race and Criminal Justice in the American South, 1817–1880, and he is starting a third book, tentatively entitled Word and Deed: The Rhetoric of Lynching from Charles Lynch to Clarence Thomas.