Bloody Williamson

by Paul M. Angle

  The insistence of anti-Klansmen that Young be dropped was matched by the Klan’s demand that Galligan resign as sheriff. He refused. “I will co-operate,” he declared, “with any body of citizens looking to the establishment of peace and orderly government in Williamson County. I will compromise. I will agree to any reasonable suggestions as to the management of my office and the enforcement of law, but I will not resign.”

  In this impasse the Citizens’ Committee could do little except issue pious pronouncements calling on the populace to abstain from violence. Even so, General Foreman decided that the prospect justified the release of most of the troops. On February 15 all except five companies were sent home. A few days later the two factions effected a compromise. By its terms, the war against the bootleggers would be conducted by the sheriff in the future. On his part Galligan agreed to replace his field deputies with new men nominated by the committee, the understanding being that neither Klansmen nor Knights of the Flaming Circle would be approved. The county board promised funds for the two additional deputies whom the sheriff insisted he needed, and for raising the salaries of the new appointees to a decent level.

  Galligan immediately appointed the men who had been agreed upon, and then telegraphed to the governor requesting that all troops, except one company to be stationed at Herrin for the time being, be recalled. The governor complied.

  On March 3 the special grand jury summoned by Judge Bowen held its first session, but its deliberations were eclipsed by the greater spectacle that opened in the United States District Court at Danville the same day. There more than two hundred residents of Williamson County, all arrested in the wholesale liquor raids, prepared to stand trial. Long before court convened the defendants, their friends and relatives, Klansmen, and curious spectators filled the courtroom and the corridors of the federal building. Deputy marshals kept a close watch for guns, but the crowd was orderly. Only Young, daily more arrogant, raised a disturbance by throwing an epithet at Charlie Birger, one of the more notorious defendants, when he met him in the corridor. A deputy marshal prevented trouble. And when the Klan leader tried to enter the courtroom wearing his automatics he discovered that in a federal court he was no exception to the rules.

  As soon as court convened the defendants, in a long line, passed slowly before Judge Walter C. Lindley. Special Prosecutor Lawrence T. Allen, assigned to handle the liquor cases in place of District Attorney W. O. Potter, who was known to be violently anti-Klan, read the specific charges to each defendant and asked him whether he pleaded guilty or not guilty. Usually the response was not guilty. The few who entered guilty pleas were fined from fifty to three hundred dollars.

  After the first day the court settled down to the tedious business of selecting juries, presenting evidence, and awaiting verdicts. Interest waned, to be aroused only when the case of some conspicuous defendant was decided. Thus there was gratification in the Klan camp when Ora Thomas, reputed to be head of the Knights of the Flaming Circle, pleaded guilty and drew a fine of five hundred dollars and a four months’ jail sentence. There was even greater satisfaction when Judge Lindley passed the stiffest sentence of all—fines totaling $2,500 and one year in jail—on Charlie Birger. By the end of the term Special Prosecutor Allen had brought 178 defendants to trial, and had convicted the great majority. Most of the violators were fined $200, $250, or $300, and some were also sentenced to a month or two in jail.

  But before the liquor trials at Danville ended Herrin had resumed its place as the focal point of interest in the Williamson County “trouble.”

  On March 14, after a nine-day session, the grand jury of the Herrin City Court presented its findings to Judge Bowen. In connection with the killing of Caesar Cagle and the attack on the Herrin hospital it returned ninety-nine indictments. Ninety-five involved men who had participated in the hospital riot. Leading the list was S. Glenn Young, whose offenses against the peace, the grand jury found, included parading with arms, false imprisonment, conspiracy, kidnapping, assault with attempt to murder, assault with deadly weapons, falsely assuming an office, robbery, larceny, riot, and malicious mischief. No other person was charged with quite so many infractions of the criminal law, but it appeared that a goodly number of Herrin’s prominent citizens would be headed for jail if the indictments resulted in convictions.

  From the ranks of the anti-Klansmen the grand jury picked two men—Carl and Earl Shelton—and indicted both for the murder of Caesar Cagle. In addition, it returned indictments against Carl Shelton for assault with a deadly weapon and assault with attempt to murder.

  The grand jury concluded its work by adopting a scathing report. Characterizing the events of February 8 and the days which followed as a “Reign of Terror” resulting from acts of “oppression and persecution by the so-called Ku Klux Klan” it paid its respects to that organization and its hired law-enforcer in biting phrases. The attack on the Herrin hospital, “entirely unlawful and without any justification whatever,” was “the most amazing display of mob violence” the jurors had ever known. Young was a usurper, who could not have acted legally as Chief of Police because he had not resided in the state and county one full year, as the law required. “It seems … clear,” the jury concluded, “that it was the purpose of the said S. Glenn Young and those acting in concert with him, to overthrow the civil authority in Herrin and in Williamson County, seize and imprison the Sheriff and Mayor and take upon themselves the task of government without any legal authority whatever.”

  The grand jury’s action infuriated the Klan. To show their resentment, members of the order staged a protest parade. At nine o’clock on the morning of March 17 some three thousand people gathered at the Christian Church in Herrin. The Protestant ministers stepped out in front, then came veterans of the Civil War in automobiles, and after them a band. The rank and file followed—professional men, merchants who had closed their stores for the morning, women pushing baby buggies, others carrying small children—“all,” as the Marion Republican put it, “marching with determined step and each with a small American flag in their button hole or pinned on their dresses.” In the rear rank marched S. Glenn Young, John L. Whitesides, and Arlie Boswell, the color guard of a huge American flag.

  The paraders, calling their demonstration a “religious protest” against the “unrighteous verdict” of the grand jury, marched and countermarched through the business district. From a window in his office Judge Bowen watched impassively.

  The parade over, many of the marchers dashed to the City Hall to sign the bonds of the men under indictment. Guardsmen with fixed bayonets—now an accepted feature of Williamson County courtrooms—looked over all who entered to see whether they carried pistols. As man after man pushed his way to the judge’s table—Young, Stearns, Carl Neilson, John Ford, Abe Hicks—the crowd cheered. It was understood that the bonds might total four million dollars, and men whose property aggregated three times that sum came forward to pledge their lifetime savings.

  Late in the afternoon, with the business of signing bonds still far from finished, Judge Bowen announced that there would be a recess until March 20. Young mounted a chair and barked to those who were present:

  “I want all you fellows to be here Thursday, so we can finish this up!”

  The response, “We’ll be with you, Glenn!” was almost smothered by cheers and handclapping.

  Noting the enthusiasm, amounting almost to hysteria, an observer would have said that S. Glenn Young had reached the climax of his career. Yet anyone who came to that conclusion would have been wrong. In sober fact, the man’s position was anything but enviable. The Klan leaders who had been paying him from their own pockets determined to put into effect their tentative decision of a month earlier, and cut off his salary. Cheers are sweet, but they do not obliterate for long the imminence of a dozen criminal prosecutions or the fear of a jobless future.

  There is reason to think that Young was downright desperate. On the night of April 15 someone in a fast-moving automobile
fired into the home of Sam Stearns. Stearns and his family escaped injury, though Ross Lizenby, his bodyguard, was hit in the leg. Months later two of Young’s henchmen, then serving jail sentences for bank robbery—of such were the legions of the Lord composed!—confessed to Lizenby that Young had framed the shooting in an attempt to force his own rehiring, and that they had fired the shots from Young’s car. Even Stearns believed that Young instigated the attack.

  But Young was soon provided for. Certain members of the Klan in East St. Louis had been proved guilty of acts of extortion in connection with Klan-supported liquor raids, and in consequence state officers of the order revoked the local charter. Young, who had joined the Klan during the spring—he had not been a member at the time of the big liquor-raids—was put in charge for the purpose of re-establishing the district’s respectability. Accompanied by four Williamson County ministers, he drove to East St. Louis on April 25 to take over the duties of his office. To the 1,400 Klansmen who greeted him he announced: “East St. Louis is a rotten city and has a bad reputation all over the state. It is run by a bunch of corrupt politicians. I am still a resident of Williamson County, and that county is the cleanest in the entire state now.” To which the mayor of the city replied, in an interview published on the same day: “If the city is rotten it is because of the Klan and not the city officials being corrupt.… As for cleaning up the city, I think he [Young] will only get it dirty.”

  Young’s departure should have brought peace to Williamson County. The Klan, however, was too sure of its righteousness. In the primary election of April 8, 1924, its candidates had swept the field. The next night thousands celebrated the victory by staging a motor parade that visited Herrin, Johnston City, and Dewmaine, and returned to Marion to burn a huge cross—the first such demonstration in almost a year. Four days later ten robed Klansmen marched into the Marion Methodist Church, knelt in silence while a young woman who accompanied them sang a stanza of “The Fiery Cross,” and then presented the pastor with twenty-seven dollars and a letter commending him for his good work. On May 1 several thousand attended a Klan barbecue at Herrin, burned two crosses, and initiated two hundred men and women. Three weeks later, crowds thronged to a “Klantauqua” at Marion, and for three days listened to Klan orations relieved by entertainment in the Chatauqua manner.

  The pattern was that of the summer of 1923—silent visitations upon churches, ghostly gatherings in the light of flaming crosses, new recruits by the hundred. But in the late spring of 1924 there was this difference, best stated in the words of George Galligan:

  The chief figures on both sides were never away from their guns. I slept, performed my duties and ate my meals with my pistols always within reach. There were always riot guns and high-powered rifles available to repel a possible Klan attack on the jail, and there were men awake at all hours acting as sentrymen. Hand grenades and machine guns, both of the hand operating variety and those to be fired from heavy tripods, were brought into the county by both sides.

  * J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, wrote me (December 31, 1947) that Young’s services “were first utilized during the latter part of 1918 as a Special Employee and that he submitted his resignation to become effective March 5, 1919.” Assuming that “the latter part of 1918” means October 1, he was actually employed for five months, or approximately 150 days. At that rate, he arrested twenty men a day, and killed a man oftener than once a week!

  I have seen no evidence, except stories inspired by Young himself, to indicate that he killed anyone prior to 1920. After that, as will appear in this narrative, he was responsible for one death, and possibly two.

  † From the time of his dismissal from the Prohibition Unit until he was employed in Williamson County, Young made a living by conducting private investigations for sheriffs in various Illinois counties, among them Iroquois, Champaign, and Massac.

  ‡ Herrin had taken advantage of that provision in the Illinois statutes which permits a municipality to set up a court having jurisdiction concurrent with that of the circuit court, the highest court of original jurisdiction in an Illinois county. The city court, however, can take cognizance only of those matters originating within the limits of the city for which it has been established.

  X

  DEATH IN A CIGAR STORE

  May 1924–January 1925

  Don’t pull that gun, Ora!

  S. Glenn Young, January 24, 1925.

  TWENTY-FIVE YEARS ago the motorist traveling from Marion to East St. Louis drove northward until he came to an improved east-and-west road known as the Atlantic-Pacific Highway, which he followed to his destination. The highway crossed the Kaskaskia River a few miles beyond the little town of Okawville, traversing a stretch of country dreary even in springtime. Tangled trees and underbrush lined both sides of the road, and backwater from the river lay stagnant in the ditches. No one lived there.

  On May 23, 1924, Young, accompanied by his wife—he had married again after his divorce—was driving to East St. Louis in the big Lincoln car that had become almost as well known as he was. As he entered the lonely road through the Kaskaskia bottoms a Dodge that had been following him started to pass on the left. When it drew abreast its occupants poured a volley of shots into the Lincoln. Mrs. Young slumped forward. Young skidded to a stop and jumped from the door to fire at the Dodge, now speeding into the distance. Instead, he collapsed. He had been hit in the knee, and one leg was useless.

  In a short time a passing motorist found the wounded couple and took Mrs. Young to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Belleville. Young followed in his own car, with another man driving. Mrs. Young, hit in the face by shotgun pellets, was in serious condition; Young’s knee had been shattered. Surgeons operated at once. Both patients would recover, they announced, although Mrs. Young would certainly lose the sight of one eye, and perhaps of both.

  Word of the attack flashed through southern Illinois. In Williamson County, Klansmen swore that the outrage would be avenged. During the evening of the 23rd a report reached Herrin that Young’s assailants were on the way to that city. A member of the city police force hastily “deputized” a large number of Klansmen, who took up posts on the roads at the edge of town. Throughout the night and the following morning they stopped and searched all cars.

  About ten a.m. word came that a side-curtained Dodge touring car had just passed through Carterville at high speed and that it was headed in the direction of Herrin. The “deputy police” on the Carterville road were warned to be on the lookout. In a few minutes the car came in view. The road guards, pistols in hand, signaled it to stop. The occupants responded with a burst of speed and a volley of shots, which the Klansmen answered. An instant later the Dodge crashed into another car on the road. Two men crawled from the wreckage and ran. Klan pistols brought both to the ground. One died at the Herrin hospital a half hour later; the other, not seriously wounded, was held there under guard.

  The dead man was identified as Jack Skelcher. He had been arrested for bootlegging during the Klan raids, and was under indictment for assault with a deadly weapon at the time of his death. His companion was a hoodlum named Charles Briggs. Several months earlier Briggs had been indicted, with Bernie Shelton, a brother of Carl and Earl, for highway robbery.

  A coroner’s jury held that Skelcher had come to his death at the hands of parties unknown.

  The murderous assault in the Kaskaskia bottoms and the quick vengeance visited on one of the reputed assailants brought Young into the headlines as never before, and the injuries to his wife, an innocent sufferer, aroused much sympathy. Bulletins came from the sickrooms in St. Elizabeth’s Hospital as regularly as if the patients had been royalty. Other reports indicated that Young’s arrogance, recklessness, and egotism had, if anything, been heightened by the attempt on his life. A small coterie of Klansmen were standing guard around the hospital, a Catholic institution, and the raider’s pistols lay within his reach. The man would not remain silent. On June 12, for no appa
rent reason other than to keep himself in the public eye, he released the text of a letter he had written three weeks earlier to W. W. Anderson, head of the federal prohibition forces in Illinois. There he charged that hundreds of saloons and stills were operating in Madison and St. Clair counties, and threatened that if the officials did not act soon, he and Klansmen under his leadership would clean them up. The laxity of U.S. District Attorney Potter, he implied, was primarily responsible for the deplorable situation. Copies of the letter were sent to Illinois Congressmen, ministers, and others active in “law enforcement.”

  Potter replied by pointing out that Madison County was not in his district, and citing the record his office had made in convictions for violation of the liquor law. Stung, Young issued a wild statement from the hospital in which he charged that Potter had been “fixed” by the bootleggers, that those who had been arrested were allowed to plead guilty and were let off with light fines, and that the district attorney “had done everything within his power to obstruct the officers in the enforcement of the Eighteenth Amendment in Williamson County.”