Murder & Mayhem in Southwestern Illinois

John J. Dunphy

• Publisher: The History Press
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN:
  9781439672068
• Edition: 0

Southwestern Illinois experienced a plethora of violence during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Settlers and Native Americans clashed at the Wood River Settlement, while Abraham Lincoln dueled on a Mississippi River island. Racial strife led to the lynching of a Black schoolteacher in Belleville in 1903 and a deadly riot in East St. Louis fourteen years later. Benbow City was a latter-day Wild West town of saloons, gambling dens and brothels, and Pere Marquette State Park screened a cache of Nike missiles. From the birthplace of Martin Luther King Jr.'s killer to the mystery surrounding Jean Lafitte's grave, John Dunphy examines the bloody ledger of southwestern Illinois.

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• The Wood River Massacre
• The Mystery of Jean Lafitte’s Grave
• An Abused Slave and the Woman Who Saved Him
• The First Duel in Illinois
• Tickets to a Black Abolitionist’s Hanging
• The Lincoln-Shields Duel
• The Lynching of a Schoolteacher
• The Brief but Wild History of Benbow City
• Curtis Reese: Minister, Humanist, Crimefighter
• The East St. Louis Race Riot
• The Lynching of Robert Prager: A World War I Hate Crime
• The Ku Klux Klan in Southwestern Illinois
• James Earl Ray and the Murder of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
• The Nike Missile Base at Pere Marquette State Park
• Bibliography
• About the Author