Bloody Williamson

by Paul M. Angle

  Thomas’s record, not a good one for a law-enforcement officer, contrasted strangely with his appearance. Slender and under average height, he carried himself with none of Young’s swagger. To his friends he showed a quiet joviality; to his enemies he was taciturn, hard, and unrelenting. His sparkling black eyes shone from a sensitive face, the natural pallor of which was accentuated by a heavy shock of curly hair. And his long dextrous fingers seemed out of place on the trigger of a blunt automatic.

  Whatever Thomas’s enemies said of him, none ever questioned his courage.

  Within a few days Galligan sent his new deputy on an errand that baited the Klan to the limit of endurance. In Herrin, Young, though still on crutches, became involved in a fight between members of the two factions. After the fracas one of the principals swore out a warrant charging him and two other Klansmen with assault to commit murder. Galligan applied to Captain Bigelow for two squads of guardsmen, and then gave the warrants to Thomas to serve. When Young and the two other men who had been placed under arrest were taken to the courthouse to post their bonds, the soldiers had to clear a pathway with bayonets. Only the rifles of the militiamen prevented an outbreak.

  And only the rifles of militiamen, stationed at all the polling-places in Herrin, kept peace on election day in early November. At that time the Klan swept the field, putting Arlie O. Boswell into the State’s Attorney’s office and electing all other candidates it supported. But the result of the election raised the temper of the public to such a pitch that Galligan asked the governor to supplement the militia on the ground, now numbering seventy, with another company, and the commanding officer joined him in requesting that there be no parade or demonstration by the victorious faction.

  Young, however, could not be repressed. Late in the afternoon of the day following the election he drove up to the courthouse and parked his car opposite the main entrance. A number of his constant followers accompanied him. Seeing Adron Smith, one of Galligan’s new deputies, on the steps, he called out tauntingly:

  “Well, Adron, I understand they’ve let you out.”

  (The reference was to the refusal of the county board, a day or two earlier, to pay the salaries of the sheriff’s new appointees.)

  “Who wants to know?” Smith replied.

  An argument followed, and one of Young’s men kicked Smith down the steps. Word of the fight spread instantly, and men ran from all directions for the showdown they expected. Fortunately, several deputies, hastily summoned from the jail, arrived in time to prevent an outbreak, and when Sam Stearns induced Young to leave, serious trouble was once more averted.

  By this time Young’s behavior had become so reckless that the Klan leaders concluded his mere presence could no longer be tolerated. The man was constantly browbeating everyone who opposed him in the slightest degree, and resorting to violence far too often. The performance he put on at the office of the Herrin News, about this time, was typical. Stomping into the front office with three armed guards, he cursed out the people there, and then went back to the composing-room. There he served notice on a little Irish linotype-operator that the next time he saw his name in print he would come in and clean up the entire force. The operator, a new employee unawed by Young’s reputation, made a reply that angered the insolent visitor. Young swore, and broke one of his walking-sticks over the man’s head. The Irishman landed a punch in Young’s face, ran, and was never seen again.

  To induce the troublemaker to leave, the Klan leaders tried persuasion. Young answered that although he had planned to spend the winter in Florida he had changed his mind, and would not leave Williamson County so long as Ora Thomas served as deputy sheriff. Moreover, he saw that the local press published his decision. The Klansmen tried a different kind of inducement, with better effect. In return for one thousand dollars, which they themselves contributed, Young promised to leave the county and stay away. Shortly afterward, he disappeared.

  Three weeks later he returned to Herrin. He was engaged, his friends said, in writing a book about his exploits. Now and then he participated in small liquor-raids, but his former associates took steps to prevent even this activity, once so much to their liking. The Herrin chief of police refused to receive the prisoners Young brought in, on the ground that he had no authority to make arrests, and State’s Attorney Boswell informed him that his office would not bring prosecutions because of the lawless methods to which he resorted. A few fanatical followers gave him money to live on.

  On the surface he was now a harmless figure. Weeks passed without a disturbance, the troops departed, and Herrin seemed to be well on the road to permanent peace. But those who came to that decision ignored certain ominous facts. Young and Ora Thomas hated each other. They lived in the close confines of a town of ten thousand, they met frequently, and every meeting served to keep their enmity at the flash point.

  The encounter that took place in the late afternoon of January 24, 1925, followed a well-established pattern. Thomas, on his way to supper, met Young and a number of his satellites. The gang blocked the sidewalk and proceeded to abuse the deputy. Thomas replied in kind. During the argument Young taunted:

  “I wish you had killed my father, you yellow bastard!”

  The remark was intended to prompt one of his party, Mont Wollard, whose father had died in the Smith garage riot, to attack the man before them, but Wollard made no move. Thomas threw another epithet, then pushed his way through the group and proceeded to his home.

  After supper he returned to the Herrin City Court, where he had charge of a jury that was still deliberating. About seven p.m. it brought in its verdict, and court adjourned. With several others, he left the courtroom. As the group reached the street, a bullet struck a concrete pillar near their heads. The men scurried behind parked automobiles and awaited developments. A moment later Young and his henchmen drove up, located the spot where the bullet had hit, then drove away.

  When nothing else happened, the men in hiding dispersed. Thomas walked to the European Hotel, where he often found a taxi to take him home. From the cigar store in the corner of the building he heard voices in angry argument. With his hand on the pistol that he carried in the pocket of his overcoat he opened the door and entered.

  In the corner of the little room, with his back to the door, Young was violently upbraiding a coal miner for having spread word that he had once been a strikebreaker. Several men stood about, absorbed in what was taking place. After a moment one of them turned, saw Thomas, and hastily slipped out a rear door. Young swung around. As he backed toward the door he said:

  “Don’t pull that gun, Ora.”

  Thomas’s pistol flashed from his pocket. In an instant the noise of gunfire and crashing glass filled the room. Then there was silence. Smoke drifted slowly into the hotel lobby.

  Several minutes passed before those who heard the shooting dared enter the cigar store. When they did they found four bodies on the floor. Young and Ora Thomas were dying. So was Ed Forbes, one of Young’s constant guards. Homer Warren, another guard, was dead.

  That night no member of the Herrin police force had courage enough to appear on the street. Klansmen patrolled the city, stopping all cars that attempted to enter. At two a.m. the first troops arrived. As their first act they disarmed the Klan patrolmen and sent them to their homes. The town was quiet.

  Thomas was buried on the afternoon of January 27. His little home was too small for even the simplest funeral, so the casket was placed on the front porch. Under a gray sky thousands shifted from foot to foot in the snow while the Rev. John Meeker, pastor of the Presbyterian Church, conducted the service.§ Galligan, surrounded by grim-faced deputies, stood in the crowd.

  At the conclusion of the service the funeral procession—a thousand marching miners, hundreds of automobiles, two truckloads of flowers—made its dreary way to the cemetery. There the minister said the final prayer as the casket was lowered into a grave only a short distance from the weed-grown plot where the victims of the Herrin Massac
re had been buried. On the other side of the burial ground, workmen were finishing the imposing mausoleum in which Young’s body was to lie.

  Few cities, large or small, have ever seen a funeral like that of S. Glenn Young. No one knows how many people viewed his body during the three days it lay in state; estimates ran as high as seventy-five thousand. By noon on the day of the funeral—January 29—out-of-town visitors jammed the streets. The conservative Post-Dispatch computed their number at fifteen thousand; local papers placed it at forty thousand. Only a fraction of the crowd succeeded in entering the Baptist Church, where the service was held. Thousands found places at overflow meetings in the Christian Church, the Methodist Church, and the Masonic Temple; but most of the visitors were compelled to stand on the streets.

  Those fortunate enough to file before the casket saw that the body was clothed in the purple robe of a Kleagle of the Klan. After all had taken their seats a soloist sang “The Rosary.” The Twenty-third Psalm was followed by a prayer. Then another solo, “Somewhere a Voice is Calling,” the reading of Young’s obituary, and “Beautiful Isle of Somewhere.” The Rev. J. E. Story, First Christian Church, spoke on “His Early Life”; the Rev. William Carlton, Baptist Church, Marion, on “S. Glenn Young, the Raider”; the Rev. I. E. Lee on “Young’s Work in Williamson County: A Backward Look”; the Rev. P. H. Glotfelty on “A Forward Look.” The hymn, “Day is Dying in the West,” brought the service to a close.

  Through it all, the blind wife of the dead Klansman sat at the head of the open coffin, stroking his face.

  The funeral procession formed in heavy twilight. At its head three men carried American flags. Two hundred Klansmen, all robed and hooded, followed on foot, and the six pallbearers in Klan regalia rode horses that also were robed and hooded. Mrs. Young and her relatives rode in the bullet-riddled Lincoln. Carloads of flowers and five hundred automobiles followed the hearse.

  At the cemetery Carl Neilson, Exalted Cyclops of the Herrin Klavern, read the Klan burial ritual in the light of a burning cross. The Rev. Robert Evans of St. Louis pronounced another eulogy. A bugler sounded taps.

  As the procession turned back to Herrin, twelve armed Klansmen took their positions around the mausoleum, the first of those who were to stand guard nightly until all fear that the grave would be desecrated had passed.

  * The case was never prosecuted. According to Art Newman, a bootlegger and gambler of East St. Louis who will appear again in this narrative, Carl, Earl, and Bernie Shelton, Jack Skelcher, and Charlie Briggs were the ones who ambushed Young and his wife. Newman claimed that the Sheltons told him the story. This is the account he gave to Roy Alexander, who printed it in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch of January 31, 1927:

  Young had left Herrin to go to East St. Louis and even before he took out of Herrin that peckerwood began to brag.

  He stood on the running board of his Lincoln in Herrin and when a crowd gathered around, he said: “Boys, I’m going up to East St. Louis now. We’ve cleaned up Williamson County. Watch what we do in East St. Louis.”

  The Sheltons heard him make that foolish crack, they told me, and they took out after his car.…

  Carl told me they almost burned the Dodge up after the Lincoln, but finally they caught up with the Youngs in the Okaw Bottoms.… They pulled up alongside the Lincoln, with Bernie driving the Dodge, and opened up on Young and his wife with pistols and a 30–30 rifle.…

  The cars, traveling pretty fast, caught together for a minute and then the Lincoln plunged away and ran down a bank at the side of the road. The door fell open on the driver’s side and Young fell out.

  “The dirty louse crawled under the machine,” Carl told me later, “but we sure got him. He looked like his whole head was shot off.”

  When Newman told this story he had become the Sheltons’ bitter enemy.

  I have heard a prominent citizen of Williamson County, whom I am not at liberty to name, say that one of the attackers told him that when they drove away they were certain they had killed both Young and his wife. My informant would not name the man.

  † In the fall of 1928 a Belleville collection-agent was still trying to collect the hospital and medical bills that Young and his wife had incurred. They were itemized as follows:

  St. Elizabeth’s Hospital $473.70

  Physicians 650.00

  Drugs 8.55

  5% interest, 4 yrs. & 3 mos. $1,132.25

  226.45

  $1,358.70

  The Department of Justice, to which request for payment was made, disclaimed responsibility on the ground that Young was not a federal employee.

  ‡ The stories told by participants in the Smith garage fight are hopelessly at variance. All are demonstrably wrong in many particulars. I have limited my narrative to the established facts.

  § Thomas was not a church member. Mrs. Thomas, a Baptist, refused to ask her minister, the Rev. I. E. Lee, to conduct the services because of his close Klan affiliations. The Presbyterian minister, though in sympathy with the Klan’s objectives, had not become involved in its activities.

  XI

  THE KLAN LOSES

  January 1925–July 1926

  It may not all be over yet. Hal W. Trovillion in “Persuading God Back to Herrin.”

  The joints were bad, but I don’t believe it was worth what it has cost to get rid of them. Herrin businessman in St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 8, 1925.

  MAYOR ANDERSON of Herrin was in Chicago when Young and Thomas killed each other. To a reporter who obtained an interview he predicted:

  “This will wind up the trouble in Williamson County. With the leaders of both the Klan and anti-Klan factions dead … from now on there will peace and quiet in Herrin.”

  Galligan, in Marion, found the prospect equally hopeful. Announcing that in an effort to restore harmony he would not appoint a successor to Ora Thomas, he pleaded:

  “Let us try more brains and fewer bullets. I invite the co-operation and advice of all who have heretofore opposed me, and trust that the lives of those sacrificed in the recent tragedy may be an added incentive to peace, more friendly relationships, and higher regard for human life and property.”

  The outlook was so promising that on January 29, 1925, only five days after the shooting, all troops in the county were ordered to their homes.

  Yet in forty-eight hours two events brought on a new crisis. The coroner’s jury found that Young and Thomas killed each other, and that Forbes and Warren met death at the hands of parties unknown. Klansmen, who by this time had convinced themselves that Young’s two guards had been shot by persons outside the cigar store while the fatal duel was in progress, were infuriated by the jury’s failure to reach the same conclusion and to name the murderers.* The second inflammatory episode was an altercation between Herrin Police Chief Matt Walker and a pro-Klan member of his force. When the chief ordered the officer to turn in his star hot words followed, and the rumor spread that the Klan intended to make an issue of the dismissal.

  Galligan, in panic, telegraphed to Adjutant General Black:

  DEEPER TROUBLE NOW ON AT HERRIN. MYSELF AND CHIEF OF POLICE WALKER AT HERRIN FULLY BELIEVE THAT MARTIAL LAW IN CITY OF HERRIN IS THE ONLY SOLUTION OF THE TROUBLE. QUICK ACTION IS NECESSARY, AND ONLY MARTIAL LAW WILL AVAIL ANYTHING.

  Justifying his telegram, the sheriff said that at least five hundred Klansmen in Herrin still carried arms. If troops would come in and disarm them, he and his deputies, with the police, could keep order. But if the Klansmen continued to carry guns, there would be more bloodshed.

  The Adjutant General replied with a blunt refusal.

  That same night a drunken man staggered into the lobby of the Ly-Mar Hotel, brandishing a revolver. When a policeman attempted to disarm him he resisted, and another policeman shot and killed him. Ugly rumors flew: the stranger had been seen with City Judge Bowen a few hours earlier; he was a killer in Galligan’s pay—this because the hat he wore was stamped with the sheriff’s name. Herrin immediately developed a bad c
ase of nerves, and fingers itched for triggers.

  Fortunately, the truth came out quickly. The dead man turned out to be a ne’er-do-well from a near-by town, unconnected with either faction. His hat had been stolen from Galligan a few days earlier, and had no significance. The only inference that could be drawn from his behavior was that Herrin was a poor place for a man in his cups to flash a pistol.

  Though the killing almost led to a riot, its result was salutary. Realizing how narrowly another disaster had been missed, the responsible members of the county board decided that a solution for the county’s troubles was imperative.

  For two days the supervisors listened to leading citizens, Boswell and Galligan among them, and wrangled with one another. Then they decided to send a committee to Springfield in an effort to induce the governor to remove the sheriff from office. Governor Small listened to the delegation and turned down their demand: Galligan had given no cause, under the law, for which he could be removed. Then the governor called in Attorney General Carlstrom, Adjutant General Black, and Galligan (on hand to argue his own case if need be) and tackled the job of effecting a compromise. Five hours later an agreement was reached. It provided:

  1. That Galligan would turn over his office to one of his deputies, Randall Parks, who would have unrestricted authority.

  2. That Galligan would leave Williamson County at once and remain away “until and unless, after conference with the Governor of the State of Illinois, it is agreed conditions are such as to permit his return.”