Bloody Williamson

by Paul M. Angle

  The central figure in most of the stories of robbery and brutal behavior was S. Glenn Young. It was Young—so they said—who used abusive language toward women, turned the contents of cash drawers into his own pockets, and pistol-whipped an occasional victim who failed to raise his hands above his head quite fast enough. And it was Young whose arrogant and foolhardy conduct precipitated the first crisis.

  The chain of events started on December 28, 1923, when a deputy sheriff and two other officers arrested State Representative Wallace A. Bandy of Marion, an ardent dry and avowed Klansman, on a warrant issued by the State’s Attorney. Bandy was held in jail for two hours, and then released on the personal recognizance of Judge Hartwell. Anti-Klansmen chortled at the fact that a bottle of liquor had been found in Bandy’s home. Young claimed that the liquor was white mule that he himself had confiscated and had left with Mrs. Bandy for safekeeping.

  Two days later Young and several men entered Paul Corder’s restaurant in Marion and ordered coffee. Corder told them that the place was closed, but that he would make some if they would wait. While the water was heating he remarked:

  “Well, they got Bandy.”

  Young replied that the case was a frame-up.

  “You’re a smart son-of-a-bitch,” Corder said.

  A fight followed, and Corder took a beating. The next day he had Young arrested on an assault-and-battery charge.

  A justice of the peace heard the case on January 8. A few minutes before it was called, Young and several of his followers stalked into the courtroom. All were heavily armed, and two of the group carried the portable machine-gun they used on raids. The jury retired, and emerged almost immediately to render a verdict of acquittal. The crowd clapped and cheered.

  But before the case even went to the jury three companies of militia had orders to proceed to Marion with all possible speed. Sheriff Galligan, with the Herrin Massacre in mind, had wired to Adjutant General Black for troops as soon as Young and his men took their guns into the courtroom. The state authorities, who had learned their lesson in the summer of 1922, responded immediately, and General Black took the first train for Williamson County.

  The next day, while soldiers guarded the courthouse and patrolled the streets, Klansmen protested vehemently to the Adjutant General. Arlie Boswell, Young’s attorney in the Corder trial, spoke for a delegation which demanded that the troops be sent home at once. There had been no threats against the sheriff, he said, nor any menace to life or property. The hubbub about a machine gun in the courtroom was nonsense—the gun, dismantled, had been carried only because it would have been stolen had it been left outside. The Bandy case was a frame-up. Marion was a clean city, and the people of the rest of the county were determined that their communities should be equally clean. Since the sheriff never found any evidence in the raids he undertook, the people had had to take matters into their own hands. Sam Stearns, chairman of the county board of supervisors, and Exalted Cyclops of the Klan, told Black that all but two members of the county board were in sympathy with the Klan, and that three fourths of the people of the county wanted the clean-up to continue. Others, including the mayor of Herrin and the pastor of the Christian Church, supported their spokesmen’s statements.

  Black refused to be stampeded. He knew that newspaper correspondents were wiring their papers that Williamson County stood on the verge of civil war, and he could see plenty of evidence to support that estimate of the situation. The arrest of Young and four prominent Herrin Klansmen on charges growing out of the recent raids—charges filed by persons who swore that they were beaten and robbed by the raiders—pointed to trouble. So did the alacrity with which Klansmen rushed to sign the bonds of the prisoners. Ominous, too, was a telegram from W. W. Anderson, division chief of prohibition agents: “Make no further raids under present conditions.”

  The Klan leaders quickly concluded that persuasion would not send the troops home. Accordingly, they asked the sheriff, ill at his residence adjoining the jail, for a conference. Far into the night they argued over Galligan’s demand that Young be excluded from enforcement activities, and the Klan’s counterproposal that the sheriff discharge its bitter enemy and his own chief deputy, John Layman. They reached no agreement other than to meet again the following day.

  Young contributed nothing to the prospect of peace by his own belligerency. “With or without federal aid we’re going to continue the raids and I’m going to lead them,” he told a representative of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat. “The sheriff’s gang tried to rule me out in the conference last night, but the Klan leaders called me in and said they would stay with me to a man as long as I produced results in the clean-up and assured me fifteen thousand others in the county were behind me as well.” To a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch he bragged: “Upon thirty minutes’ notice I can gather two thousand men about me to do my bidding in this drive, and in two hours I can get seven thousand from Williamson and Franklin counties, members of the Ku Klux Klan.”

  On the tenth the conference with the sheriff was resumed. No agreement resulted, but Galligan came to a decision: he would ask that the troops be removed when he was satisfied that Herrin, the potential trouble-spot, was quiet. On his orders Chief Deputy Layman called the alleged saloonkeepers and bootleggers to a meeting at the Rome Club. Tear down your bars, he told them, and find some other way to make a living. Young and the Klan were applying for injunctions in the United States Court, and they—the saloonkeepers—could either shut up now or be padlocked later.

  Only three of the eighty-three who were present agreed to quit. An attempt to disarm the people of Herrin, where more than two hundred gun permits had been issued to Klansmen in recent weeks, failed dismally. Even when appealed to by Sam Stearns, the justices of the peace who had issued the permits refused to revoke them. The city, they argued, was under the control of the anti-Klan element, and the men who had applied for the right to carry guns were still in danger.

  In spite of the failure of these moves, a compromise was reached. The mayor of Herrin agreed to discharge his anti-Klan policemen and replace them with Klan sympathizers, and Galligan promised to raid any place suspected of selling liquor. To prove his sincerity he offered to meet in private any citizen who had, or believed he had, evidence of law violation. On January 14 his deputies made eight liquor raids, and in the next several days ten more. In most of the raids arrests were made.

  Satisfied with the situation, the sheriff assented to the removal of the troops. Except for a few officers, who remained as observers, the militia left on January 15 and 16.

  If Galligan thought, as he apparently did, that the Klan would now leave law enforcement in his hands, he was quickly disillusioned. In the early-morning hours of Sunday, January 20, a large number of Klansmen, led by Young, raided thirty-five places, chiefly in the small mining-camps, and made sixty-six arrests. Again the county seethed with dissension.

  The Klan was riding high, and had no intention of abating its law-enforcement program regardless of what the sheriff might do. As usual, the preachers spoke for the hooded Knights. Meeting on January 23, the Williamson County Ministerial Union passed resolutions denouncing “exaggerated press reports” of conditions in the county and denying that either race or religion had anything to do with the clean-up. Young, whom so many were criticizing, was “a perfect gentleman” who had the respect of every good citizen in the county. He had already effected “the most perfect cleanup that has ever been pulled off in this state,” and he had done it, as he had promised, without bloodshed. “We want to say,” the ministers concluded, “that all this harangue and scandal is unjust and uncalled for, and we are not willing for it to go by without our protest.”

  Not that Young needed advocates. On January 30, returning from a short trip to Kansas City, he gave an interview to the East St. Louis Journal in which he characterized Williamson County as the cleanest county in the United States, and called the police forces of Marion and Herrin the best in Illinois. Neverthe
less, much remained to be done, and he promised that the raids would continue until the county was one hundred per cent perfect. They would be conducted independently of the sheriff, with whom he and the Klan would not co-operate. The next day, speaking before the Marion Rotary Club, he denied that he and his raiders had appropriated anything except illegal liquor and a few pistols, and charged that reports to that effect had been fabricated by the lawbreakers, mostly foreigners. He concluded with a pledge: “Raids will be continued monthly, semimonthly, or weekly if needed. I am making my home here and the raids will be continued until the bootleggers, gamblers, and other undesirables are driven out.”

  Within twenty-four hours the biggest raid of all was under way. Between 1,200 and 1,300 Klansmen gathered at Redmen’s Hall in Johnston City, where they were provided with state warrants issued by justices of the peace. At nine p.m. they fanned out over the county, but they had so many places on their lists that they continued to raid until noon the next day. Altogether, they found six stills, twenty-seven barrels of wine, fifty-four gallons of white mule, and two hundred gallons of home brew. They arrested 125 persons. These they herded into a special train, contracted for in advance, and took to Benton for arraignment before the United States commissioner. At their destination the prisoners were formed into a column, and with Young, armed with his forty-fives and sub-machine gun, at the head and armed guards on the flanks, marched to the public square. Thousands of spectators witnessed one of the most novel parades ever seen in an American city.

  One week later Herrin exploded in the civil war so many had feared. The “trouble,” as the local newspapers called it, started with a meeting of anti-Klansmen at the Rome Club on Friday night, February 8. Galligan learned of the meeting, and though still ill, decided to make a personal effort to prevent an outbreak. Accompanied by John Layman, he walked in on the gathering and warned those present that there must be no violence. While he was talking, a man burst into the room and shouted: “The Klan are coming!” Several men, with guns drawn, rushed for the door.

  The “Klan” turned out to be two members of Herrin’s new pro-Klan police force—John Ford, the chief, and Harold Crain. When Galligan and Layman reached the hallway they found the two policemen disarmed, hands up, and covered by an angry group that included Carl and Earl Shelton and Ora Thomas. Layman, fighting mad, grabbed Ford by the hair and shouted in his face:

  “You damn dirty Ku Klux son-of-a-bitch, we’ve got you where we want you!”

  Galligan ordered Ora Thomas to get the crowd back into the meeting-room: he would take care of Layman and Ford. A scuffle followed, and someone fired a pistol. Layman sank to the floor, his hands over his bleeding chest. Then he struggled to his feet, and stumbled toward Ford.

  “Here’s the dirty son-of-a-bitch that shot me,” he said. “Get him! Get him!”

  Ora Thomas spoke up. “No, boys, Ford didn’t shoot Layman. I have his guns.”

  Galligan ordered the crowd into the hall.

  “Get back into the hall, hell, and get us all killed!” Carl Shelton exploded.

  “No, by God!” shouted Hezzie Byrnes. “Get them machine guns and get out on the sidewalk and kill every son-of-a-bitch that comes up!”

  Earl Shelton jeered: “Where’s Mage Anderson [mayor of Herrin]? Go tell him here is his God damned police!”

  Galligan, seeing that he had a riot on his hands, hurried the two policemen down the stairs. At the foot of the stairway they met a third officer, about to go up. The sheriff disarmed the newcomer, commandeered a car at the curb, ordered his prisoners in, and told the driver to go to Marion. There he telephoned the Adjutant General, warned him that hell was about to break loose in Herrin, and urgently asked for troops. Then, fearing a lynching, he took the Herrin policemen to the Jackson County jail in Murphysboro.

  Shortly after Galligan spirited away his prisoners, the young son of Caesar Cagle, a Herrin constable who had made a quick transition from bootlegger to Klansman, passed the Rome Club on his way home from a picture show. One of the men in the crowd on the sidewalk told him that there had been a fight and that he had better find his father. He telephoned home, learned that his father was at the Masonic Temple, and went there for him. Father and son started out together, but the boy soon turned off to go home and Cagle went on alone. Near the Jefferson Hotel he met a crowd of men, twenty or twenty-five in number. One of them called out: “Here he is!” Three shots rang out. The men ran, leaving Cagle lying on the sidewalk. Bystanders carried him to the Herrin hospital, where he died within a few minutes. John Layman, seriously wounded, had been brought in half an hour earlier.

  The news of Cagle’s death spread over the county in a few minutes, and armed Klansmen converged on Herrin. Young, in Marion at the time of the shooting, reached Herrin within a half hour. There he took charge, sending hundreds of men to patrol the streets and the roads leading into the city. The patrolmen stopped all cars and demanded the password of their occupants. Those who could not give it were ordered off the streets or turned back at the city limits.

  Downtown Herrin, Scene of the Klan War

  1. CATHOLIC CHURCH

  2. CATHOLIC HIGH SCHOOL

  3. PARISH HOUSE

  4. SMITH GARAGE

  5. LIBERTY HOTEL

  6. EUROPEAN HOTEL

  7. CITY HALL AND JAIL

  8. LY-MAR HOTEL

  9. ROME CLUB

  10. JEFFERSON HOTEL

  11. MASONIC TEMPLE

  12. BAPTIST CHURCH

  13. HERRIN HOSPITAL

  14. CHRISTIAN CHURCH

  15. METHODIST CHURCH

  Klansmen swore out warrants charging Galligan, Ora Thomas, C. E. Anderson, mayor of Herrin, and several others with the murder of Cagle. When word came that Thomas and Anderson were at the hospital with Layman, Young, followed by several hundred Klansmen, went after them. Finding the door locked, Young shouted a demand for admission. Dr. J. T. Black, the proprietor, refused to admit him. Young’s followers pounded on the door and, when it held fast, fired into the panels.

  As Dr. Black ran upstairs the firing became general. Windowpanes, shattered by bullets, crashed to the floor. Patients screamed. Those who could move slipped to the relative safety of the floor; the others were lifted from their beds by the doctor, the nurses, and visitors.

  In an adjoining building that served as an annex to the hospital four men ordered the frightened employees, all women, into the basement. One of them said: “We’re going to blow the hospital to hell and kill everybody we can get our hands on.” Another told the women: “We don’t want Layman; we want Ora Thomas.”

  The firing continued. Occasionally one of the men inside the building—the little group of those who had brought in John Layman or had come to inquire about him during the evening—risked his life by crawling to a window and firing a clip into the darkness, but that was too hazardous to attempt very often.

  About three a.m. the first troops arrived. Twenty men from the Carbondale company under Major Robert W. Davis, with rifles loaded and bayonets fixed, walked into the midst of the attacking mob and ordered its members to disperse. Although they outnumbered the guardsmen twenty-five to one, they slunk away.

  When dawn broke, and it became light enough to survey the damage, the floors of the hospital were found to be covered with broken glass, and bullet marks pitted every wall facing an outside window. Miraculously, not a single person, inside the hospital or out of it, had been wounded.§

  On Saturday morning Herrin discovered that despite the presence of troops it was in the hands of the Klan. Armed Klansmen, wearing crude stars cut from tin, patrolled the streets and kept crowds from forming, while in the city hall S. Glenn Young, calling himself acting chief of police, heard the reports of men he had sworn in as deputy policemen, directed that arrests be made, and ordered prisoners to jail. A sentry stood at the door of the office he had pre-empted, and no one who could not give the Klan password was admitted.

  At Young’s direction Mayor Anderso
n was arrested, charged with murdering Cagle, and thrown in jail. Galligan, in Carbondale on Saturday morning, was arrested on the same charge and held there until Klansmen from Herrin called for him. In the city hall his captors led him before Young, who wore his broad-brimmed hat and pearl-handled automatics even while he sat in the city judge’s chair. “I find you guilty of the murder of Caesar Cagle,” Young told the sheriff, and ordered him to jail.

  Young and the Klansmen behaved with incredible vindictiveness. When Galligan asked one of the jailers, a fellow lodge-member, to get him some fever medicine, he was told: “You won’t need fever medicine by the time we get through with you.” Harold Crain, the Herrin policeman whom he had arrested on Friday night and who had since been released, came up to his cell and said: “George, you saved my life Friday night and I’ll do what I can to help you.” Young, who overheard the offer, barked out: “No, we’ll show no sympathy for this son-of-a-bitch.” Coroner McCown, who under the law had become acting sheriff by reason of the sheriff’s incapacity, demanded that Young give him custody of his prisoner. Young refused. When McCown asked him how it was that he had more authority than the sheriff, he answered: “I have just as much authority as you have.”

  On Sunday, February 10, the Klan made the funeral of Caesar Cagle the occasion for a demonstration of its strength. Crowds filled the large auditorium of the First Baptist Church long before two p.m., when the services were to begin, and thousands stood in the churchyard and on the street. The funeral procession included a double line of men more than a block long. An American flag covered the casket when it was carried into the church. There a huge blanket of flowers, white except for the green letters, KKK, was laid upon it, while at the side stood a “fiery cross” of red roses. In his sermon the Rev. P. H. Glotfelty referred to Cagle as a martyr in the cause of law and order, and proclaimed that he fell in line of duty. The “liquor element” was responsible for his death. “But these lawless actions will not deter us,” Glotfelty promised. “Rather must we be encouraged and strengthened to carry out the work of good citizenship that is before us.”