Criminal - Herrin Massacre

Episode Date: January 24, 2020

In the spring of 1922, the United Mine Workers of America announced a national strike. And then, that summer in Herrin, Illinois, 23 people were murdered over two days. Men, women, and children came out of their houses to watch, and in some cases, to take part in the violence. Scott Doody’s book is Herrin Massacre. Special thanks to the Special Collections Research Center at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, and Matt Gorzalski, and to John Griswold, who wrote Herrin: The Brief History of an Infamous American City. Say hello on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Sign up for our occasional newsletter, The Accomplice. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts: iTunes.com/CriminalShow. We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop.  Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Support for Criminal comes from Apple Podcasts. Each month, Apple Podcasts highlights one series worth your attention, and they call these series essentials. This month, they recommend Wondery's Ghost Story, a seven-part series that follows journalist Tristan Redman as he tries to get to the bottom of a ghostly presence in his childhood home. His investigation takes him on a journey involving homicide detectives, ghost hunters, and even psychic mediums,

and leads him to a dark secret about his own family. Check out Ghost Story, a series essential pick, completely ad-free on Apple Podcasts. Botox Cosmetic, Adabotulinum Toxin A, FDA approved for over 20 years. So, talk to your specialist to see if Botox Cosmetic is right for you. For full prescribing information, including boxed warning, visit BotoxCosmetic.com or call 877-351-0300. Remember to ask for Botox Cosmetic by name. To see for yourself and learn more, visit BotoxCosmetic.com.

That's BotoxCosmetic.com. That's BotoxCosmetic.com. I always talked about how it's the best kept secret ever. The people of Heron took those secrets and what they saw to their grave. This is author Scott Doody. In the summer of 1922, in a town called Heron in southern Illinois, 23 people were murdered over two days. Men, women, and children came out of their houses to watch, and in some cases, to take part in the violence. I don't understand how this just happens.

How, was there any voice of reason in this whole thing? See, and I hear this in your voice, and it's what I learned through the four or five years of research. You keep thinking, you know, we all grow up watching movies. The guy in the black hat, the guy in the white hat, the good guy. all movies end well, so forth, so on. No, no one stepped forward. No one stepped forward and no one would discuss it. More than 50 years after the murders, two college students from Southern Illinois University went to Heron and started asking people to talk about what had happened. They literally drove over to Heron with an old-school tape recorder

and taped men at the local pool hall in downtown Heron in the 1970s, guys that were alive and had participated in the massacre. Now, had they thought about it, of course, you know, young people do crazy things, they would have never done that. But they actually got people to talk to them about what had happened. It's just human nature. When somebody tries to take your living away from you, you're going to fight. Even a wild animal will do that.

What happened in Heron, Illinois in 1922 is a story about what happens when the job you thought you had is taken away. It's a story about money and work, pride and loyalty, and a story about coal. Any place coal is in the ground, there's trouble. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. Heron, Illinois was a coal town. Local residents used to say that you could be a coal miner or a farmer in Heron, but the mining work was the better path. And one of the reasons that working in the mines was better was because of the union, the United Mine Workers of America. Tell me what the unions did for the mine workers in Heron. Well, they changed their lives. They knocked back that 100-hour work week to a 60-hour work week to a 40-hour work week.

But the most important thing is the men started to have a say in how deep they'd mine, how the mines were put together, what kind of construction would go into it, the safety aspects, and the mines were put together, what kind of construction would go into it, the safety aspects, and more important, the wages, because they went from making nothing to making a pretty decent living. When the United States Coal Commission visited Heron, they wrote in their report that the town really believed in the Union, that it had, quote, brought them into the promised land

when their government had been careless or indifferent to their needs. And then, in the spring of 1922, the United Mine Workers announced a national strike. It would be the largest ever, and would include 600,000 miners from every coal-producing state in the country. They were striking for better pay. On April 1st, miners all over the country stopped work. Just outside of Heron, a man named William J. Lester

had recently bought land and opened a mine. He was new at it. He wasn't from Heron, and he was in debt. Here's longtime Heron resident Joe Walker speaking in 1978. I was right here and was right in the middle of it, knew all about it. They was anxious to get in the coal business and didn't know anything about the coal business.

William J. Lester didn't want to stop working just because the miners were on strike. He had 60,000 tons of coal that he was being told he wasn't allowed to sell. And because mines were shut down all over the country, the price of coal had skyrocketed. He was sitting on coal worth about $3.7 million today. So Lester decided to bring in non-union labor to help him ship and sell it. Well, anybody that was acquainted in southern Illinois knew that you couldn't do that. Other mine operators warned Lester not to cross the Union. Lester still moved forward. He reportedly said,

I need the money. Why shouldn't I? On June 15th, about 50 men arrived from Chicago. Some would work in Lester's mine, and some would protect those workers from the people of Heron. The people of Heron had been on strike for two and a half months. Folks didn't have welfare to fall back on. There was no federal government programs. You didn't work.

You didn't eat. So when Lester decided to bring in non-union workers, that meant that all of the striking workers who did work at one point at the mine were just kind of sitting there in town watching these train cars roll into town with these workers who were there to replace them, these strike breakers. Oh, exactly. Exactly. What you had was literally thousands of people. And this is for their livelihood, their wives, their children, their families. So what do you think's going to happen? And it did. On June 16th, Lester notified the railroad that he had 16 cars of coal ready for shipment. The first railroad crew refused to touch it, but a second crew eventually agreed to transport it.

Many people continued to warn Lester to stop. He wouldn't. He'd already hired heavily armed private detectives from a Chicago agency called the Hargrave Secret Service. On June 20th, a telegram from the president of the United Mine Workers of America was published in local newspapers. It said that union members would be, quote, justified in treating this crowd as an outlaw organization. On the morning of June 21st, in broad daylight, on a state highway,

the United Mine Workers ambushed a truck and a car. The truck had non-union workers in it. The car had detectives in it. And I mean, just shot both vehicles all to hell. And then went to the local neighbors right there along the state highway, handed over their rifles and shotguns and said, hold these, I'll be back for them. All over town, people gathered weapons, even breaking into hardware stores to take guns and ammunition. Right there was a hardware store, and down the street was a hardware store. And they went in and got all their shotguns and rifles, took them.

And the men, the union men, told the store owners, when they were taking lever lever action Winchester rifles and pump shotguns and handguns and ammunition, bill it to the union, the union's good for it. When one store owner called the local union leader to make sure the union would pay for the guns, the union leader said yes. His members were just going bird hunting, he said. At 3.30 that afternoon, Lester's Mine Superintendent, a man named Claude McDowell, called the sheriff's office to say that Lester's Mine was completely surrounded and that 500 shots had been exchanged. Williamson County Sheriff Melvin Thaxton was a former Union minor himself. Most accounts of what happened on June 21st and 22nd make a note that Sheriff Thaxton

was hard to find through all of this. He's quoted as saying, I have the situation well in hand, and there's no danger. No one lifts a finger. Not one person. Nobody calls the National Guard. No one. These guys are on their own, on both sides. So there's bullets flying in, bullets flying out. It's a war zone for the better part of 18 hours. And this gunfight went on until daylight.

Scott Doody says that in the middle of the night that night, most of the security guards Lester had brought from Chicago to protect the non-union workers snuck out of the mine and left. Lester was also nowhere to be seen. He checked himself into a hotel in Chicago, 300 miles away. From his hotel, he'd agreed to stop mining if the Union would allow his men to return home unharmed. Well, a group of about 100 Union miners approached the front of the mine with a white flag. They discussed terms of surrender, just like a war zone. They agreed to march them to the train station at Heron, and that they will allow them safe passage to leave.

That didn't happen. That's when things went bad. Each month, Apple Podcasts highlights one series worth your attention, and they call these series essentials. This month, they recommend Wondery's Ghost Story, a seven-part series that follows journalist Tristan Redman as he tries to get to the bottom of a ghostly presence in his childhood home. His investigation takes him on a journey involving homicide detectives, ghost hunters, and even psychic mediums, and leads him to a dark secret about his own family. Check out Ghost Story, a series essential pick, completely ad-free on Apple Podcasts. Hey, it's Scott Galloway, and on our podcast Pivot, we are bringing you a special series about the basics of artificial intelligence.

We're answering all your questions. What should you use it for? What tools are right for you? And what privacy issues should you ultimately watch out for? And to help us out, we are joined by Kylie Robeson, the senior AI reporter for The Verge,

to give you a primer on how to integrate AI into your life. So tune into AI Basics, how and when to use AI. A special series from Pivot sponsored by AWS, wherever you get your podcasts. The local chapter of the United Mine Workers of America agreed to stop firing at William Lester's mine if the strike-breaking miners left town immediately and Lester shut down the operation.

Here's former Heron Union miner Joe Shoemake. You let one scab move in, it's just like cancer. It just keeps spreading. And that's what they was fighting out here at Leicester Strip. They was trying to nip it in the bud, you might say. A huge crowd of the Union miners gathered to escort the strikebreakers away from the mine. One man reportedly yelled, the only way to free the country of strikebreakers is to kill them all off and stop the breed. Someone called the local leader of the United Mine Workers of America, a man named Hugh Willis.

And he says, I'll be right there. That's when things went bad. Hugh Willis shows up in his automobile, blocks the highway, and tells the men, take these men out into the woods, shoot all you can. Don't shoot them in front of these women and children, because now the whole highway is lined with people on both sides of the road. They literally lined them up against a barbed wire fence about a hundred yards off the road and it literally depended on if you were in first in line or last in line. Once they got to the fence and they started hearing the shooting, the people that were in the front of the line jumped the fence and started running through the woods into the town of Heron. A man in the crowd reportedly yelled, here's where you run the gauntlet. Let's see how fast you can run between here and Chicago.

So they're lost. They're running for their lives. Can you imagine? I can't even imagine what was going through their minds. They keep thinking, where's the police? Where are the soldiers? What in the hell is going on? How did this happen?

One of the locals thought and heard a rumor and shouted it out. The National Guard is on the way. Their words were the guard is on its way, which was not true. Well, that caused the locals to disperse a little bit afraid of the National Guard. So the wounded laid there. Some men escaped through the fences, hid in barns. They were caught. They wound up with six men in front of the Heron Grade School, right downtown Heron. They marched the men through town, near restaurants and candy stores and people's homes. They told the men to crawl. They tied them together. They shot one man in the foot, and he brought the rest of the men down.

When they got to the cemetery, they shot them all. Some men didn't die right away, and they slit their throats. A huge crowd of men, women, and children came to the cemetery to watch. Here's one of them from the 1978 recording. I didn't like it.

I was out there at the cemetery and saw them. People get killed. It's like killing dogs. I was right there, close to a ship, four, five, six feet from it. They wouldn't leave. They killed them. I remember it well.

They didn't know what the hell to do. They was determined to kill him, which they finally did, of course. Killed their body. There was an AP wire service reporter down from St. Louis who witnessed it all. And he said, I'll never forget a beautiful young blonde-haired woman holding a baby in her arms with a flowered dress stepping on the men's wounds to see if they would groan to see if they were dead or not he said that has stuck with me you know this is almost 30 years later he said i think about it every day he tried to give water to to a couple of the men that were still alive, and he was told, they'll get no water, and you'll get the same if you don't back off. I guess the way to put it, it'd be like shooting somebody in the head today

in front of CNN or Fox or whoever. They're sitting there with their camera. They just did it. How did the whole thing end? I think many people were appalled by what they saw. And as the day turned into that afternoon, I think folks started realizing what had happened. Now, having said that, they gathered all their bodies up and displayed them in a downtown building for a day. Some people reportedly spit on the corpses. One woman was later quoted as saying

to her children, look at the dirty bums who tried to take the bread out of your mouths. Finally, a police officer couldn't stand it anymore. They were sticking cigarettes and cigar butts in these dead men's mouths. Finally, he couldn't take it anymore, and he put a rope up to keep people back off the dead men. The massacre was national news. Heron was described as an unconquered province of lawlessness and a stench in the nostrils of humanity. President Warren Harding referred to what happened in Heron as a shocking crime, butchery and madness

that shamed and horrified the country. In the days following the massacre, not one person was arrested. Weeks passed. Still, no arrests. It was unbelievable to everyone. There had been plenty of witnesses. Hundreds and hundreds of people had seen what had happened. When questioned, witnesses would describe what they had seen, often in horrific detail.

But when it came to saying who had done what, people said they just didn't know. A piece in the St. Louis Times asked, Shall unionism be set above the laws of God and of man? Eventually, the state of Illinois collected a list of names of men they would attempt to hold responsible in court. The state's attorney was a man named Delos Doody. The first murder trial began on November 8, 1922.

Jury selection lasted for weeks because Delos Doody could not find 12 men he felt were impartial. Over the years, reports have come out that the union tried to bribe all kinds of people. Jurors said they were offered bribes. Delos Duty said he was offered a bribe. And a man from the next town over, named Anderson Man Thompson, claimed in a recorded interview with his granddaughter, the union told him to locate potential witnesses they couldn't trust and to temporarily relocate them. If we had any witness we couldn't depend on,

we'd take them away. We kept them in St. Louis. He describes putting them up in a St. Louis hotel and paying them small salaries for their cooperation. When he got word that it was safe to do so, he brought the witnesses back home to Heron. The jury came back with a not guilty verdict. Delos Duty tried again.

The second trial began in February 1923. Six minors were accused of murdering one of Lester's men. Again, the jury came back with a not guilty verdict. Delos Duty told reporters that he was giving up. He felt that Herr and jurors were going to come back with a not guilty verdict no matter what evidence he presented. It is a hopeless proposition, he said. I don't know who around here would condemn the coal miners. I certainly don't.

That's what makes your union is believing in it and willing to fight for it. It's just like fighting for your country. It was terrible at the time. Everybody was really tore up. There was nothing anybody in here could do. That was between a union and non-union miners. We couldn't blame the union miners for it, taking their jobs. You couldn't blame them?

You couldn't blame them, no. There were scabs came in here to take jobs away from the union men. That was the main thing in people's mind, and they weren't going to get away with it. I felt the same way about it. And I think it was a decision they had to make and I think they made the right decision. Money is the root of all evil. That's it. The root of all evil.

Money. It can buy anything off. Well, I would say that the community was shocked to think people was killed, but they were upset to think that a man would come in here to take another man's job and rob his family. That's just the way they looked at it. Do you look at it that way? Yeah, I look at it that way. 23 men were killed during those two days in Heron in June of 1922.

Three of the men were local, and 20 had been brought to town by William Lester. Records later showed that, in some cases, the men Lester hired had been referred by Chicago employment agencies and may have come to Heron with no idea that they were breaking a strike. Many people felt there was only one person to blame for their deaths and the deaths of the local miners, William J. Lester. The men from out of town whose bodies bodies were not claimed, were buried anonymously. In 2009, Scott Doody went looking for those graves.

And you can't make this up. What had happened was the town, in their haste and their urgency to bury the past, lost track of where the massacre victims were buried, along with about 100 other poor people. They started selling the lots in the 1980s and burying local people on top of poor people that had been buried in that section of the cemetery. So here's what happened. The Heron massacre victims had local Heronites

buried in amongst them and on top of them because they had forgotten their history. That is the ability of the locals to keep what had happened buried. Criminal is created by Lauren Spohr and me. Nadia Wilson is our senior producer. Susanna Robertson is our assistant producer. Audio mix by Rob Byers. Special thanks to the Special Collections Research Center at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale,

and Matt Grzalski for help locating the audio recorded by the college students in 1978. Thanks to John Griswold and Richard Ketter. Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal. You can see them at thisiscriminal.com. We're on Facebook and Twitter at Criminal Show. Criminal is recorded in the studios of North Carolina Public Radio, WUNC.

We're a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a collection of the best podcasts around. Shows like The Heart. The Heart went on hiatus, and now it's back with a new team. The Heart sets out to tell stories about love in the most universal sense, what it means to love ourselves while loving each other. I'm aware of this whole other universe around me. It's a very important black people, especially black and black artists. But it's like I'm trapped inside myself.

She talks to me and I begin to perform professionalism. The sort of placation of whiteness I've been trained to perform my whole life. It's like a reflex. It's just like it happens in spite of me. It's like a switch is flipped and it just happens in spite of myself. As if my body responds before my mind even does. Go listen. I'm Phoebe Judge.

This is Criminal. Radiotopia from PRX. The number one selling product of its kind with over 20 years of research and innovation. Botox Cosmetic, Adabotulinum Toxin A, is a prescription medicine used to temporarily make moderate to severe frown lines, crow's feet, and forehead lines look better in adults. Effects of Botox Cosmetic may spread hours to weeks after injection causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems, or muscle weakness may be a sign of a life-threatening condition. Patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk. Don't receive Botox cosmetic if you have a skin infection. Side effects may include allergic reactions, injection site pain, headache, eyebrow and eyelid drooping, and eyelid swelling. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms, and dizziness. Tell your doctor about medical history, muscle or nerve conditions including

ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease, myasthenia gravis, or Lambert-Eden syndrome in medications, including botulinum toxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects. For full safety information, visit BotoxCosmetic.com or call 877-351-0300. See for yourself at BotoxCosmetic.com. Your own weight loss journey is personal. Everyone's diet is different. Everyone's bodies are different. And according to Noom, there is no one-size-fits-all approach. Noom wants to help you stay focused on what's important to you with their psychology and biology-based approach. This program helps you understand the science behind your eating choices

and helps you build new habits for a healthier lifestyle. Stay focused on what's important to you with Noom's psychology and biology-based approach. Sign up for your free trial today at Noom.com.