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In The State of Southern Illinois: An Illustrated History, Herbert K. Russell offers fresh interpretations of a number of important aspects of Southern Illinois history. Focusing on the area known as “Egypt,” the region south of U.S. Route 50 from Salem south to Cairo, he begins his book with the earliest geologic formations and follows Southern Illinois’s history into the twenty-first century. The volume is richly illustrated with maps and photographs, mostly in color, that highlight the informative and straightforward text. Perhaps most notable is the author’s use of dozens of heretofore neglected sources to dispel the myth that Southern Illinois is merely an extension of Dixie. He corrects the popular impressions that slavery was introduced by early settlers from the South and that a majority of Southern Illinoisans wished to secede. Furthermore, he presents the first in-depth discussion of twelve pre–Civil War, free black communities located in the region. He also identifies the roles coal mining, labor violence, gangsters, and the media played in establishing the area’s image. He concludes optimistically, unveiling a twenty-first-century Southern Illinois filled with myriad attractions and opportunities for citizens and tourists alike. The State of Southern Illinois is the most accurate all-encompassing volume of history on this unique area that often regards itself as a state within a state. It offers an entirely new perspective on race relations, provides insightful information on the cultural divide between north and south in Illinois, and pays tribute to an often neglected and misunderstood region of this multidimensional state, all against a stunning visual backdrop. Superior Achievement from the Illinois State Historical Society, 2013
In this collection of articles describing the people, places, and folkways of southern Illinois, John W. Allen provides entertaining and informative glimpses into the region’s past. Included here are sketches of the early pioneering days when wolves were literally chased from the door, stories about the many Indian artifacts discovered among the rolling hills and valleys of the area, and articles pertaining to the strategic role the region played during the Civil War. Allen also describes the activities of such infamous outlaws as Samuel Mason and the Harpe brothers as well as the famous Illinois-born heroes “Bat” Masterson, “Wild Bill” Hickok, and Wyatt Earp. In his warm and friendly style, Allen reminisces about the self-sufficient and satisfying rural life of a previous generation with its oxcarts, pie suppers, threshing machines, kerosene lamps, and blacksmith shops. Any reader interested in southern Illinois and its history will delight in this collection of stories from John W. Allen’s popular newspaper column, “It Happened in Southern Illinois.”
Life on the road was anything but glamorous for Farm Security Administration photographers traveling through southern Illinois in the mid-1930s. Often their most promising subjects lived at the end of the worst roads, many of which lacked bridges, drainage ditches, or gravel. Outfitted with three government-issue cameras, flashbulbs, tripods, and film-processing chemicals, their job was to help "explain America to Americans" by seeking out and photographing the one-third of the nation FDR described as "ill-housed, ill-clad, and ill-nourished." Featured in this book are more than one hundred photographs from the collection of a quarter of a million taken by FSA photographers between 1935 and 1943. These pictures capture life during the Great Depression as viewed in the coal-mining towns of Herrin, West Frankfort, and Zeigler; the river communities of Shawneetown, Cairo, and Grayville; the farming regions near McLeansboro, Newton, and Harrisburg--more than two dozen southern Illinois county seats, hamlets, and landings. Together they comprise a photographic portrait of the determination, hard work, and capacity to find ways to celebrate life exemplified by the people of southern Illinois during one of the most difficult periods of American history. FSA photographers helped to invent and popularize the "documentary style," a type of photography in which pictures and their arrangement carry much of the information in a story. Intended to document the success of a government project, these pictures survived to preserve for later generations the story of the people of southern Illinois and how they endured the difficult times of the Great Depression.
Situated between the Wabash, Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, the Southern Illinois country is rich in history, folk­lore, scenery, and natural resources. At about the latitude of southern Virginia, and extending from the flat prairie farm­land of central Illinois to the rugged Illinois Ozarks, the area is the natural terminal boundary for hundreds of plant species reaching out to all points of the compass. It is also the oldest and most sparsely populated part of Illinois, a region of small towns and independent people. Surveying the area in words and pic­tures, the authors sensitively and appre­ciatively portray the region's special qualities. Land Between the Rivers, a perennial classic since it was first published in 1973, provides an uncommon portrayal of American life in a distinct region, a memorable journey in both time and place.
Russell P. Strange "Book of the Year" Award from the Illinois State Historical Society, 2012. On the eve of the War of 1812, the Illinois Territory was a new land of bright promise. Split off from Indiana Territory in 1809, the new territory ran from the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers north to the U.S. border with Canada, embracing the current states of Illinois, Wisconsin, and a part of Michigan. The extreme southern part of the region was rich in timber, but the dominant feature of the landscape was the vast tall grass prairie that stretched without major interruption from Lake Michigan for more than three hundred miles to the south. The territory was largely inhabited by Indians: Sauk, Potawatomi, Kickapoo, and others. By 1812, however, pioneer farmers had gathered in the wooded fringes around prime agricultural land, looking out over the prairies with longing and trepidation. Six years later, a populous Illinois was confident enough to seek and receive admission as a state in the Union. What had intervened was the War of 1812, in which white settlers faced both Indians resistant to their encroachments and British forces poised to seize control of the upper Mississippi and Great Lakes. The war ultimately broke the power and morale of the Indian tribes and deprived them of the support of their ally, Great Britain. Sometimes led by skillful tacticians, at other times by blundering looters who got lost in the tall grass, the combatants showed each other little mercy. Until and even after the war was concluded by the Treaty of Ghent in 1814, there were massacres by both sides, laying the groundwork for later betrayal of friendly and hostile tribes alike and for ultimate expulsion of the Indians from the new state of Illinois. In this engrossing new history, published upon the war's bicentennial, Gillum Ferguson underlines the crucial importance of the War of 1812 in the development of Illinois as a state. The history of Illinois in the War of 1812 has never before been told with so much attention to the personalities who fought it, the events that defined it, and its lasting consequences. Endorsed by the Illinois Society of the War of 1812 and the Illinois War of 1812 Bicentennial Commission.
In the 1950s and ‘60s, John W. Allen told the people of southern Illinois about themselves—about their region, its history, and its folkways—in his series of newspaper articles, “It Happened in Southern Illinois.” Each installment of the series depicted a single item of interest—a town, a building, an enterprise, a person, an event, a custom. Originally published in 1963, Legends & Lore of Southern Illinois brings together a selection of these articles preserving a valuable body of significant local history and cultural lore. During territorial times and early statehood, southern Illinois was the most populous and most influential part of the state. But the advent of the steamboat and the building of the National Road made the lands to the west and north more easily accessible, and the later settlers struck out for the more expansive and fertile prairies. The effect of this movement was to isolate that section of the state known as Egypt and halt its development, creating what Allen termed “an historical eddy.” Bypassed as it was by the main current of westward expansion and economic growth, its culture changed very slowly. Methods, practices, and the tools of the pioneer continued in use for a long time. The improved highways and better means of communication of the twentieth century brought a marked change upon the region, and daily life no longer differed materially from that of other areas. Against such a cultural and historical backdrop, Mr. Allen wrote these sketches of the people of southern Illinois—of their folkways and beliefs, their endeavors, successes, failures, and tragedies, and of the land to which they came. There are stories here of slaves and their masters, criminals, wandering peddlers, politicians, law courts and vigilantes, and of boat races on the rivers. Allen also looks at the region’s earlier history, describing American Indian ruins, monuments, and artifacts as well as the native population’s encounters with European settlers. Many of the vestiges of the region’s past culture have all but disappeared, surviving only in museums and in the written record. This new paperback edition of Legends & Lore of Southern Illinois brings that past culture to life again in Allen’s descriptive, engaging style.
The epic struggle between traditional, agrarian society and modern industrial capitalism was played out on the national stage as the War between the States. The same struggle between traditional and modern values split Illinois between "Egypt"--the southern region populated by yeoman farmers who came to Illinois from Kentucky, Virginia, Missouri, and other southern states--and the Yankee-dominated, urban north. Richard J. Jensen treats Illinois as a microcosm of the nation, arguing that its history exhibits basic conflicts that had much to do with shaping American society in general. Northern reformers in Illinois were intent on remaking the state in their image: middle-class, egalitarian, urban, and progressive. These values clashed with the patriarchal supremacy and intense loyalty to kin and ken by which the people of southern Illinois, and the South, organized their lives. When the Civil War broke out, sympathy for the Confederacy ran high in southern Illinois. Although the region officially supported the Union, guerrilla bands terrorized Unionists, and in Charleston a full-scale riot against Federal troops erupted in 1864. The Union victory decisively shifted both the nation and Illinois toward faster modernization. Violence became more bureaucratized, and localism eroded with the onslaught of chain franchises, consolidated schools, and homogenized suburbs. Jensen extends his discussion to the emergence of newer, postmodern conflicts that continue to occupy the people of Illinois. Without neglecting the high-profile individuals and events that put the Prairie State on the map, Jensen offers an innovative, wide-angle view that expands our perspective on Illinois history.
Illinois State Historical Society Superior Achievement Award, 2013 As the first African American elected to the Illinois General Assembly, John W. E. Thomas was the recognized leader of the state’s African American community for nearly twenty years and laid the groundwork for the success of future Black leaders in Chicago politics. Despite his key role in the passage of Illinois’ first civil rights act and his commitment to improving his community against steep personal and political barriers, Thomas’s life and career have been long forgotten by historians and the public alike. This fascinating full-length biography—the first to address the full influence of Thomas or any Black politician from Illinois during the Reconstruction Era—is also a pioneering effort to explain the dynamics of African American politics and divisions within the Black community in post–Civil War Chicago. In From Slave to State Legislator, David A. Joens traces Thomas’s trajectory from a slave owned by a doctor’s family in Alabama to a prominent attorney believed to be the wealthiest African American man in Chicago at the time of his death in 1899. Providing one of the few comprehensive looks at African Americans in Chicago during this period, Joens reveals how Thomas’s career represents both the opportunities available to African Americans in the postwar period and the limits still placed on them. When Thomas moved to Chicago in 1869, he started a grocery store, invested in real estate, and founded the first private school for African Americans before becoming involved in politics. From Slave to State Legislator provides detailed coverage of Thomas’s three terms in the legislature during the 1870s and 1880s, his multiple failures to be nominated for reelection, and his loyalty to the Republican Party at great political cost, calling attention to the political differences within a Black community often considered small and homogenous. Even after achieving his legislative legacy—the passage of the first state civil rights law—Thomas was plagued by patronage issues and an increasingly bitter split with the African American community frustrated with slow progress toward true equality. Drawing on newspapers and an array of government documents, Joens provides the most thorough review to date of the first civil rights legislation and the two controversial “colored conventions” chaired by Thomas. Joens cements Thomas’s legacy as a committed and conscientious lawmaker amid political and personal struggles. In revealing the complicated rivalries and competing ambitions that shaped Black northern politics during the Reconstruction Era, Joens shows the long-term impact of Thomas’s friendship with other burgeoning African American political stars and his work to get more black representatives elected. The volume is enhanced by short biographies of other key Chicago African American politicians of the era.
Edgar Allen Imhoff renders a series of touching, colorful vignettes about growing up in southern Illinois during the Great Depression. He writes poignantly of his family and their struggles (including his father's exhausting but successful effort at self-education) as he revisits his early childhood years in the country and his eventual move to the town of Murphysboro, where he encountered school bullies, outstanding teachers, first love, World War II, and adolescence. Imhoff contrasts these memories of his youth with events, incidents, and thoughts from his more recent past. While writing a government check with six figures to the left of the decimal, he remembers how his mother once scrounged together thirty cents so Imhoff and his brother and sister could go to the circus with their classmates. Listening to President Carter give a speech in the Rose Garden reminds him of the contrasting elocutionary style of the Reverend William Boatman, the pastor at his country church, which was built by Imhoff's great-great-grandfather and others. Through such contrasts, Imhoff not only paints a loving picture of his past, he also comments on the alienation and emptiness that mark many lives in the United States, especially those of modern nomads. Imhoff has himself become a nomad, living far from the land of his birth, enjoying a successful and rewarding career. Yet he is drawn repeatedly to his past, his family, his childhood home, and the intricate combination of events, attitudes, values, and loyalties that influenced and molded him.
Christiana and John Tillson moved from Massachusetts to central Illinois in 1822. Upon arriving in Montgomery County near what would soon be Hillsboro, they set up a general store and real estate business and began to raise a family. A half century later, in 1870, Christiana Tillson wrote about her early days in Illinois in a memoir published by R. R. Donnelley in 1919. The Tillsons lived quite ordinary lives in extraordinary times, notes Kay J. Carr, introducing this edition. They moved west and prospered in the land business at a time when America was being transformed from a rural, agricultural country into an urban, industrial nation. Their views and sensibilities, Carr says, might seem strange to us, but they were entirely normal to people in the early nineteenth century. Thus Tillson's memoir provides fascinating but believable snapshots of ordinary nineteenth-century American life.