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Title: Bloody Williamson: A Chapter in American Lawlessness (Prairie State Books) by Paul M. Angle, John Y. Simon ISBN: 0-252-06233-7 Publisher: Univ of Illinois Pr (Pro Ref) Pub. Date: October, 1992 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.75 (4 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Only in America
Comment: Williamsburg County had an unbelievable amount of violence, in both variety and magnitude, in such a short period of time. In less than fifty years this one county had labor wars, Ku Klux Klan wars, gang wars, and one of the worst feuds in American history. Paul Angle is a good writer, but that is only an added benefit. Reading the media accounts of these events would be fascinating enough. Anyone interested in a case study of a dysfunctional community should read this book.
Rating: 5
Summary: First read the book
Comment: I write primarily to prevent the interested reader from being influenced by Alan Mills's review. It seems that Alan's review is based on a look at the dustjacket, or perhaps something someone told him while he wasn't exactly paying attention. Had he been listening more closely, he might have learned that Williamson is not a town, but a county. Had he finished Chapter One he might not have missed the central fact that it was not the miners who were killed in what came to be known as the "Herrin Massacre", but the company's mine guards and a group of recent Irish immigrants working the mine during the strike,who surrendered to the union under promise of safe conduct, before being taken to a field and shot by striking miners, who then cut the throats of their victims and urinated on their bodies. It is possible that a reading of the book would have alerted Alan to the fact that in 1922 Williamson County the union was not only well established, but had the support of a majority of the populace, and the collusion of some county officials. It was a combination of public intimidation and bribery that prevented jurors from convicting anyone in the two celebrated murder trials that followed the massacre. I don't understand Alan's point about the federal government fostering the wealth of the rich; worrying about this may be a hobby of Alan's, but the concept has nothing to do with Angle's book, or the events it describes. Those who do go on to read Angle's classic book will find a well-written and exciting account of an extraordinary period of lawlessness in Southern Illinois. It is also well-researched and accurate. Some of the participants in these events later refused to write books of their own, saying that they could never tell the story as well as Paul Angle already had.
Rating: 4
Summary: Obscure Town teaches a great lesson for us all
Comment: Starting with a strike of the coal miners, the company hires outside thugs, who end up massacring the miners. But this is only the beginning of the blood that made Williamson (a small coal mining town in southern Illinois in the 1920's) Bloody!
The thugs didn't leave. They rather liked having the run of the town. Bootlegging, gang wars, and all [heck] breaks loose.
Its important to remember the context when reading this book--because the author doesn't give you much. The worst race riots in American History happened a few miles away, in East St. Louis, in 1916--a few short years before the time covered in this book. Unions hadn't been legally recognized--that came a few years later, amidst the depression. Coal, and the economy in general, were booming. The stock market was exploding. And the federal government took the position that its role was to foster the wealth of the rich.
Anyone who thinks that political corruption is confined to big cities, hasn't spent much time in small town politics. This book is an eye opener. Of course, anyone who thinks that this sort of corruption is a part of America's long distant past, hasn't been reading the paper much recently. Political shenanigans in down state Illinois are alive and well. Of course, the big economic engine driving the southern Illinois economy today is the prison industry, but that's another book. (see Going Up the River, by Joseph Hallinan, for a description of the same area today, dominated by Tamms Supermax Prison).
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Title: A Knight of Another Sort: Prohibition Days and Charlie Birger by Gary Deneal, Jim Ballowe ISBN: 080932217X Publisher: Southern Illinois Univ Pr (Trd) Pub. Date: January, 2002 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Richard J. Daley: Politics, Race, and the Governing of Chicago by Roger Biles ISBN: 0875805663 Publisher: Northern Illinois Univ Pr Pub. Date: June, 1995 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
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Title: The Outlaws of Cave-In-Rock: Historical Accounts of the Famous Highwaymen and River Pirates Who Operated in Pioneer Days upon the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers and over the Natchez (Shawnee Classics) by Otto A. Rothert, Robert Clark ISBN: 0809320347 Publisher: Southern Illinois Univ Pr (Trd) Pub. Date: January, 2002 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: Sugar Creek: Life on the Illinois Prairie by John MacK Faragher ISBN: 0300042639 Publisher: Yale Univ Pr Pub. Date: March, 1988 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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Title: Making a New Deal : Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939 by Lizabeth Cohen ISBN: 0521428386 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 25 October, 1991 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
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