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Virden is a city in Macoupin and Sangamon counties in the U.S. state of Illinois. The population was 3,231 at the 2020 census.
Lacon is a city in, and the county seat of, Marshall County, Illinois, United States. It is part of the Peoria Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 1,878 at the 2020 census, down from 1,937 in 2010.
Toluca is a city in Marshall County, Illinois, United States. The population was 1,340 at the 2020 census. It is part of the Peoria, Illinois, Metropolitan Statistical Area.
The Springfield race riot of 1908 consisted of events of mass racial violence committed against African Americans by a mob of about 5,000 white Americans and European immigrants in Springfield, Illinois, between August 14 and 16, 1908. Two black men had been arrested as suspects in a rape, and attempted rape and murder. The alleged victims were two young white women and the father of one of them. When a mob seeking to lynch the men discovered the sheriff had transferred them out of the city, the whites furiously spread out to attack black neighborhoods, murdered black citizens on the streets, and destroyed black businesses and homes. The state militia was called out to quell the rioting.
The People's Grocery lynchings of 1892 occurred on March 9, 1892, in Memphis, Tennessee, when black grocery owner Thomas Moss and two of his workers, Will Stewart and Calvin McDowell, were lynched by a white mob while in police custody. The lynchings occurred in the aftermath of a fight between whites and blacks and two subsequent shooting altercations in which two white police officers were wounded.
Roy Belton was a 19-year-old white man arrested in Tulsa, Oklahoma with a female accomplice for the August 21, 1920 hijacking and shooting of a white man, local taxi driver Homer Nida. He was taken from the county jail by a group of armed men, after a confrontation with the sheriff, and taken to an isolated area where he was lynched.
Robert Paul Prager was a German immigrant who was lynched in the United States during World War I as a result of anti-German sentiment. He had worked as a baker in southern Illinois and then as a laborer in a coal mine, settling in Collinsville, a center of mining. At a time of rising anti-German sentiment, he was rejected for membership in the Maryville, Illinois local of the United Mine Workers of America. Afterward he angered area mine workers by posting copies of his letter around town that complained of his rejection and criticized the local president.
The Battle of Virden, also known as the Virden Mine Riot and Virden Massacre, was a labor union conflict and a racial conflict in central Illinois that occurred on October 12, 1898. After a United Mine Workers of America local struck a mine in Virden, Illinois, the Chicago-Virden Coal Company hired armed detectives or security guards to accompany African-American strikebreakers to start production again. An armed conflict broke out when the train carrying these men arrived at Virden. Strikers were also armed: a total of five detective/security guards and eight striking mine workers were killed, with five guards and more than thirty miners wounded. In addition, at least one black strikebreaker on the train was wounded. The engineer was shot in the arm. This was one of several fatal conflicts in the area at the turn of the century that reflected both labor union tension and racial violence. Virden, at this point, became a sundown town, and most black miners were expelled from Macoupin County.
The Illinois coal wars, also known as the Illinois mine wars and several other names, were a series of labor disputes between 1898 and 1900 in central and southern Illinois.
In Forsyth County, Georgia, in September 1912, two separate alleged attacks on white women in the Cumming area resulted in black men being accused as suspects. First, a white woman reportedly awoke to find a black man in her bedroom; then days later, a white teenage girl was beaten and raped, later dying of her injuries.
In the early hours of 3 June 1893, a black day-laborer named Samuel J. Bush was forcibly taken from the Macon County, Illinois, jail and lynched. Mr. Bush stood accused of raping Minnie Cameron Vest, a white woman, who lived in the nearby town of Mount Zion.
Ephraim Grizzard and Henry Grizzard were African-American brothers who were lynched in Middle Tennessee in April 1892 as suspects in the assaults on two white sisters. Henry Grizzard was hanged by a white mob on April 24 near the house of the young women in Goodlettsville, Tennessee.
David Jones was an African-American man who was lynched in Nashville, Tennessee on March 25, 1872 after being arrested as a suspect in a killing. He was mortally wounded while in jail, shot twice in the back while resisting white mob members who came to take him out; the whites pulled him into the Public Square and hanged him from a post outside the police station, with a crowd of an estimated 2,000 in attendance. The sheriff interrupted the hanging and took Jones down. Taken back to the jail, Jones died of his injuries on April 9, 1872.
Berry Washington was a 72-year-old black man who was lynched in Milan, Georgia, in 1919. He was in jail after killing a white man who was attacking two young girls. He was taken from jail and lynched by a mob.
The Newberry Six lynchings took place in Newberry, Alachua County, Florida, on August 18, 1916.
The Spring Valley race riot of 1895 was a violent racial conflict between Eastern and Southern European immigrants and African American coal workers in the mining town of Spring Valley, Illinois. The conflict was in response to the robbery and shooting of Italian miner Barney Rollo, who reported that his assailants were five black men. The assault provoked the town's long-standing social and racial unrest, and many white immigrant workers united against the African American miners. During the investigation into the shooting several black miners were temporarily taken into custody for questioning and many white townspeople began to form a mob, demanding that all blacks be fired and removed from Spring Valley. The mine manager refused, which prompted the white miners to violently riot against both the black miners and their families, forcing them to flee to the nearby town of Princeton.
The Carterville Mine Riot was part of the turn-of-the-century Illinois coal wars in the United States. The national United Mine Workers of America coal strike of 1897 was officially settled for Illinois District 12 in January 1898, with the vast majority of operators accepting the union terms: thirty-six to forty cents per ton, an 8-hour day, and union recognition. However, several mine owners in Carterville, Virden, and Pana, refused or abrogated. They attempted to run with African-American strikebreakers from Alabama and Tennessee. At the same time, lynching and racial exclusion were increasingly practiced by local white mining communities. Racial segregation was enforced within and among UMWA-organized coal mines.
The Danville race riot occurred on July 25, 1903, in Danville, Illinois, when a mob sought to lynch a Black man who had been arrested. On their way to county jail, an altercation occurred that led to the death of a rioter and the subsequent lynching of another Black man. At least two other Black residents were also assaulted. The rioters failed to overtake the police stationed at the jail and the Illinois National Guard restored order the next day.
References
- 1 2 3 4 "Miners Hang a Negro at Lacon". Chicago Tribune . November 8, 1898. Retrieved January 31, 2022– via Newspapers.com.
- ↑ "Mob Hangs a Negro". Waukegan News-Sun . November 8, 1898. Retrieved January 31, 2022– via Newspapers.com.
- ↑ "Lynching a Closed Chapter". Chicago Tribune . November 9, 1898. Retrieved January 31, 2022– via Newspapers.com.