To Herrin Back

"Cleaning Up Williamson County" by Roy James in St. Louis Daily Star, Jan. 27, 1925

Our Graphical History Tour today returns to the bloody troubles of Williamson County in southern Illinois, the scene of years of clashes involving union miners, management goon squads, illegal drinking establishments, Prohibition agents, and the Ku Klux Klan. (Catch up with the Klan vs. Bootleggers war here.) One of the central characters of the story met his end on January 24, 1925.

"His Town" by Rollin Kirby in New York World, ca. Jan. 29, 1925

S. Glenn Young came to Williamson County on a mission to root out bootleggers, ostensibly as an agent of the federal government. A kleagle in the Klan, Young had no aversion to violence and acknowledged no limits to his authority: placing the mayor and sheriff of Herrin under arrest over the murder of a pro-Klan deputy, and also arresting the judge who tried to impanel a grand jury to investigate Klan violence.

"Their Standing as a Community" by Edward Gale in Los Angeles Times, Feb. 3, 1925

On January 24, S. Glenn Young and fellow klansman Homer Warner clashed with Deputy Sheriff Ora Thomas and his lieutenant, Ed Forbes, both known gamblers and bootleggers. There was a total eclipse of the sun visible in much of the midwestern and northeastern United States that same day, referenced in the Rollin Kirby cartoon above.

"The Arm of the Law" by J.P. Alley in Memphis Commercial Appeal, Jan. 27, 1925

Deputy Thomas had returned to town after facing corruption charges in state court, and was with Forbes at a barber shop that served as an anti-Klan headquarters. Hearing of Thomas's return, Young gathered some fellow Klansmen and headed for the barber shop. The opposing groups faced off in the street outside the shop, and somebody fatally shot Forbes — accounts differ — and all hell broke loose.

"Bootleg" by Grover Page in Louisville Courier-Journal, Feb. 2, 1925

Guns blazing, Young and his men pursued Thomas as he retreated into the barber shop. Thomas returned fire from behind a counter, killing Young with a shot through the heart. Warner was also killed, and Thomas, wounded, was executed by one of the Klansmen at point-blank range. 

"Red All Over" by Carey Orr in Chicago Tribune, Feb. 4, 1925

Sadly, even without Young on the scene, the killing continued. A "mysterious stranger" entered the Ly-Mar Hotel in Marion in the wee hours of Sunday, February 1, claiming to have an arrest warrant for a Klansman named Glenn Foster. The man forced the desk clerk at gun point to phone Foster, then proceeded to threaten a number of other hotel employees.

He was fatally shot by police officer Rufus Whitson, who arrived on the chaotic scene. The dead man was found wearing a hat belonging to Sheriff George Galligan, who later offered no explanation for how the man came into its possession.

"Human Values in Alaska and Herrin" by Daniel Fitzpatrick in St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Feb. 4, 1925

Fitzpatrick contrasted the situation in Herrin with the 674-mile delivery of antitoxin by dogsled in -50F temperatures to address an outbreak of diphtheria in Nome, Alaska. (The extent of the epidemic in Alaska is unknown; while there were no more than seven deaths in Nome itself, its only doctor supposed that hundreds of Eskimo children may have been lost to the disease.)

"All The World Is Waiting..." by Roy James in St. Louis Daily Star, Feb. 4, 1925

Sheriff George Galligan and Illinois State Attorney Arlie Boswell met in Marion, Illinois, in an effort to draw up a peace plan for Herrin. Galligan asked that the state stop judges from deputizing ordinary citizens and issuing firearms to them.

The view from Springfield was that Galligan was part of the problem, not part of the solution. In the month ahead, Illinois Governor Lennington Small, Attorney General Oscar Carlstrom, and Adjutant General Carlos Black, joined by five Williamson County supervisors friendly to the Klan forced him to resign. The sheriff's department was then under complete control of the Klan, which immediately placed hundreds of bootleggers, beer runners, and moonshiners under arrest and seized thousands of gallons of liquor, wine, and beer.

Galligan wrote a book about his tenure as Williamson County sheriff a few years later, published by Leader Press in Oklahoma City.