Bloody Williamson (29 page)
Authors: Paul M. Angle
All the cars, that is, except a Buick coupé. Its driver lay limp against the steering-wheel, dead; the man beside him was mortally wounded. Four others, all dying, lay on the lawn. Three of these were Klansmen—Mack and Ben Sizemore, brothers, and Harland Ford, John Ford’s brother. The fourth was a gangster named Noble Weaver, from West Frankfort. In the Buick were Orb Treadway, of Harrisburg, and the same Charles Briggs who had escaped with a minor wound when Jack Skelcher was killed. Both were enemies of the Klan.
The day after the riot John Smith told a reporter for the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
that he was about ready to give up. Twenty-four hours later he made the decision.
“They would get me next time,” he said. “I’m going to leave, to keep from getting killed, and to keep from killing anyone.
“In all the liquor raids,” he added, “I never shot anyone. The raiding ended more than a year ago, and today I wouldn’t start a raid if they put a saloon next door to me. But the liquor gang has kept after me, and today my business is ruined, for people are afraid to come to my place to trade.”
That same day he sold his business and left for Florida.
Automatically, Herrin tendered the three dead Klansmen the same flamboyant funeral that had been the last reward of their predecessors who had lost their lives in the “trouble.” Once more there was an overflow crowd, a profusion of flowers, flag-covered caskets, and crosses of red roses. And once more one minister after another proclaimed that the dead men had fallen in line of duty and exhorted the living to carry on the fight for the rigid enforcement of the Eighteenth Amendment.
This time, however, neither the funeral dramatics nor the exhortations of the ministers had any inflammatory effect. The coroner’s inquest, begun on the day the riot victims were buried, caused no ripple of excitement. A reporter for the
Marion Republican
noted the absence of ominous signs with some wonderment:
nothing indicated “that three days before, the bustle of traffic on the streets had been punctuated by the crack of pistol shots and the moans of dying men.” His story continued:
School children with their books under their arms passed without so much as a casual glance at the armed militiamen who slowly stalked the principal streets. Women were downtown shopping early, dressed in their spring attire. The bright spring sunshine glistened on the polish of the automobiles that slipped through the traffic of trucks and pedestrians. Everywhere there was a stir as if the city had awakened from a period of lethargy. There was hardly parking place for automobiles downtown. Crowds gathered on the street corners, clerks rushed across the streets bare-headed, smiling and waving to friends passing by. There was everything to indicate, on the surface at least, that peace and rejoicing had come to Herrin with the springtime.
Even a resumption of raiding was taken in stride. Perhaps the spectacle of Boswell and Galligan conducting raids jointly, as they now proceeded to do, stunned the entire populace.
Early in May the grand jury met to investigate the election-day riots. Its members had before them the verdict of the coroner’s jury: “Death by gunshot wounds at the hands of parties unknown.” After remaining in session for more than two weeks the jurors came to the same conclusion. Not one of three hundred witnesses could or would name a single living participant in either the Smith garage battle or the Masonic Temple riot. The grand jury found no indictments, and adjourned.
Six weeks passed without the hint of a disturbance. Then Judge W. W. Duncan of the Illinois Supreme Court, who lived in Marion, called a meeting of the mayor and aldermen of Herrin, the county officials, and every factional leader of consequence. He had the promise of the state authorities, he informed them, that the troops who had been on duty since election day would be kept in the county until he was satisfied that peace had been established permanently. He was convinced that that
time had come, but before notifying the governor of his decision he demanded that all who were present pledge their word that they would use every effort to control the troublemakers. All promised.
The governor responded to Duncan’s notification by sending a telegram to every newspaper in the county. If, he warned, local officials failed to maintain order, and if it became necessary to send the militia in again, he would declare martial law.
Two weeks later, on July 16, 1926, the one company that had been on duty piled its machine guns and equipment into baggage cars and left for home. The Klan war was over.
‡
No war, however, ends with the firing of the last shot, or even with return to normal living. Costs always exceed gains, leaving a balance for the future to pay.
On the surface, the Klan cleaned up Williamson County. Open liquor-selling, open gambling, open vice were stamped out. It was soon to be demonstrated, however, that the bootlegger was still in business, though operating more warily and in the face of greater hazards than before. For this partial victory, twenty lives and a maiming-for-life were only a down payment. Long friendships had been broken, and the common ties of church, lodge, and labor union broken. Reunion, moreover, would come with agonizing slowness. Galligan wrote with prescience when he predicted: “The old hatreds will live on, through this generation, and into the next, for Williamson’s blood is liberally tempered with the old mountaineer stock and Williamson’s people are slow to forget, loath to forgive.” Even today in Williamson County a man is more likely to be described as a “Klucker” or
“anti-Klucker” than as a Republican, or a Methodist, or a Mason, and the terms still carry a residue of animus or approbation.
Years would pass before the Italians of Herrin would consider themselves a part of the community in which they had formerly been at home. From the beginning of the crusade, the Klansmen denied, with some truth, that they were primarily anti-Catholic or anti-foreign. Yet, since most of the Italians were winemakers, and many of them bootleggers as well, they suffered the same consequences they would have if the Klan had been moved by religious or racial prejudices. The result was resentment and a cleavage that seriously retarded their amalgamation with the older stock.
Two and a half years of almost constant turmoil bred an abnormal degree of recklessness and lawlessness. “The joints were bad,” a Herrin businessman said shortly after Young’s death, “but I don’t believe it was worth what it has cost to get rid of them. I would hate to have my boy conduct, or frequent, such places—but I would hate even worse to have him become a gun-toter, and a potential gun-fighter and murderer.” Boys did become gun-toters, and some became murderers, who might have gone straight had the county kept its sanity.
Worst of all was the effect of the Klan warfare on the hard core of lawbreakers who had constituted themselves the gun-fighting opposition. Constant conflict gave this group solidarity, discipline, and contempt for orderly living. These qualities, in these men, would soon exact a heavy price.
*
I have found no one in Williamson County who believes that Young and Thomas killed each other. Former Klansmen contend that friends of Thomas, outside the cigar store, shot Young; while men who knew Thomas believe that he was killed by one of Young’s men who hid behind a counter until Thomas had emptied his pistol.
†
These cases were striking evidence of the cleavages brought about by the Klan warfare. At the time of his death Young was under seventy-three indictments. The charges included: falsely assuming an office, robbery, larceny, assault with intent to murder, assault with a deadly weapon, kidnapping, false imprisonment, conspiracy, riot, malicious mischief, and parading with arms. In two indictments he was the sole defendant, in all others a codefendant.
Ora Thomas, when he died, was under thirteen indictments, including riot, murder, assault with intent to murder, and conspiracy.
Eleven indictments, charging riot and assault with intent to murder, stood against Arlie Boswell. Delos Duty, as State’s Attorney, had drawn a number of indictments in which he himself was charged with rioting and murder. One of his codefendants on several counts was Judge E. N. Bowen. Galligan was a defendant in ten indictments charging malfeasance in office, rioting, robbery, conspiracy, and murder. C. E. Anderson, Mayor of Herrin during most of the Klan trouble, was named in three indictments for assault with intent to murder. Seventeen indictments stood against Harry Walker, Herrin policeman; Ross Lizenby, also a Herrin policeman, was under six indictments for false imprisonment, kidnapping, and conspiracy.
Ten charges of assault with intent to murder hung over Otis Maynard, member of the county board of supervisors and uncompromising enemy of Galligan. In seventeen indictments Sam Stearns, chairman of the board, was charged with malicious mischief, riot, assault with intent to murder, and conspiracy. Harry Herrin was under sixteen charges, including false imprisonment, riot, parading with arms, and assault with intent to murder.
Coroner George Bell, who had been elected with Klan support, was a defendant in nineteen indictments. John Ford, former Herrin Chief of Police, was named in seven. Ten charges stood against Police Magistrate Abe Hicks; twenty-nine against Carl Neilson, Exalted Cyclops of the Herrin Klan; twenty-five against John Smith, Klan leader; and twenty-three against Brady Jenkins, constable.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch,
February 6, 1925.
‡
The Klan still had a duty to perform. On August 8, 1926, three state officers of the Klan visited Herrin and Marion to pay the debts of the Williamson County Klan. At that time it was revealed that prominent local Klansmen had borrowed between $15,000 and $20,000 to finance the clean-up. The note had been reduced by substantial payments, but balances of $4,000 at two Herrin banks, and $3,400 at two Marion banks, remained unpaid. These were paid in full with funds from the Klan’s national treasury.
Marion Republican,
August 9, 1926.
GANG WAR
June 1926–January 1927
What is Charlie Birger going to do? Will he stand for the killing of his men? Is his reply to be a pitched battle with the Shelton crowd … or are his men to make reprisals only where they can find single Shelton gangsters?…
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 27, 1926.
T
WO MONTHS
after the election-day riot, coal miners on their way to work found the body of a young man beside a country road north of Herrin. Blood still seeped from a bullet wound in the jaw. Evidently the dead man had been taken by surprise, for the revolver he wore had not been fired. No one could identify the body, and the murderer was never discovered.
A few days later a resident of Herrin was assailed as he sat in his parked automobile and clubbed into unconsciousness.
One night during the first week of July a waiter at the Jefferson Hotel was badly beaten after an argument with a patron.
Mayor McCormack ordered the Herrin police to arrest all gunmen found in the city and throw them into jail unless they could show some means of support. “We are at present having trouble,” he announced, “with a gang of undesirable citizens who are striving to keep up a reign of terror by beating up some respectable citizens without warning.” And the State’s Attorney filed an
information against Earl and Bernie Shelton and three of their followers—Ray Walker, Harry Walker, and “Blackie” Armes—charging them with assaulting the Jefferson Hotel waiter.
The mayor’s threat and the State’s Attorney’s action accomplished nothing. Within a week a notorious character known as “Oklahoma Curly” was killed in a roadhouse on the outskirts of the city. Four days later three unmasked gunmen held up a gambling establishment in the basement of the European Hotel and robbed the patrons of watches, rings, pistols, and three thousand dollars in money. On the last day of July an eighteen-year-old Herrin boy was shot four times while taking part in the robbery of a local roadhouse.
“Keep calm,” a local newspaper admonished its readers. “There may be a few roadhouse killings, because where there is wine, woman—and pistols—there is liable to be a little friendly argument any time.” But as for calling in the troops again—unthinkable!
There were more roadhouse killings. On a Sunday night late in August Harry Walker and an ex-convict named Smith shot each other to death in what appeared to be a personal quarrel. Some of the townspeople, however, thought it ominous that one of the Sheltons and “Blackie” Armes should have been interested spectators at the coroner’s inquest. Yet, in spite of the fact that Walker had been a Herrin policeman and the son of a former chief of police, another local paper shrugged off the killing as “a war among kindred tribes … just like the feuds in the larger cities. Unless new developments take place in which a general clean-up is staged between the feuding factions, there will be no further disturbance.”
New developments soon took place. On the night of September 12 “Wild Bill” Holland, Mack Pulliam, and Pulliam’s wife left a roadhouse near Herrin. As they entered their car two men opened fire from the shadows. The three victims slumped in their seats, unconscious. Someone drove the automobile with its bleeding passengers to Herrin and parked it in front of the hospital.
When the occupants were found Holland was dead and Pulliam in serious condition. Both men were friends of Walker and Smith and adherents of the Sheltons.
