Bloody Williamson (2 page)

June 21–2, 1922

A
LL THROUGH
the night the mine guards and workmen huddled beneath empty coal-cars. Soon after sundown they were jolted by a series of explosions, and no one needed to tell them that their water plant had been blown to bits. Behind piles of railroad ties they were safe enough, even though now and then bullets spattered against the steel sides of the cars or thudded into the tough wood. But they were trapped, and they knew it.

At dawn John E. Shoemaker, assistant superintendent, and Robert Officer, timekeeper, ran from the barricade to the office to telephone for help. The line was dead. While the two men worked with the phone, shots crashed through the flimsy siding. Looking out, they saw armed men lying behind the crests of the high piles of dirt that surrounded the strip mine in which they were besieged. The men underneath the cars, now near panic, begged C. K. McDowell, the superintendent, to surrender. He agreed, reluctantly.

Bernard Jones, a mine guard, tied a cook’s apron to a broomstick and came out from the barricade.

“I want to talk to your leader,” he called to the men lying behind the hills of raw earth.

One of the attackers rose to his feet. “What do you want?” he asked.

Jones replied that the men inside would surrender if they could come out of the mine unmolested.

“Come on out and we’ll get you out of the county,” was the answer.

Behind the barricade the guards and workmen threw down their arms. As they emerged they put up their hands and formed a line. Then they walked along the railroad track and through the cut in the piles of overburden through which the spur entered the mine.

The besiegers—some five hundred miners on strike and their sympathizers—surged forward, a rifle or revolver in almost every hand. They searched the prisoners and lined them up two abreast. One of the captives near the end of the line went back to the bunk car and returned with his grip. A striker took it from him.

“You won’t need that where you are going,” he said.

The procession started along the railroad toward Herrin, five miles to the northwest. After a short distance the prisoners were ordered to lower their hands and take off their hats. The mob grew ugly. Some of its members fired their guns into the air, some swore at the captives, and some called out to newcomers: “We got the scabs! We got the scabs!” A Negro armed with a long rifle ran up and down the line in a frenzy. Several white men urged him to use his fists on the prisoners. One of them called out:

“See these white sons-of-bitches that we don’t think as much of as we do of you, colored boy!”

At Crenshaw Crossing, a hamlet half a mile from the mine, a number of men waited for the procession. The column halted. A dark, burly man with a revolver—not the leader who had promised safe conduct—waved his hat for quiet and started to talk. As the noise subsided his words carried to the frightened captives:

“The only way to free the county of strikebreakers is to kill them all off and stop the breed.”

Someone in the crowd demurred. “Listen, buddy, don’t rush things,” he warned. “Don’t go too fast. We have them out of the mine now. Let it go at that.”

“Hell! You don’t know nothing,” the first speaker answered with a burst of temper. “You’ve only been here a day or so. I’ve been here for years. I’ve lost my sleep four or five nights watching those scab sons-of-bitches and I’m going to see them taken care of.”

The mob, moving again, became uglier. Some of its members struck the prisoners with pistol butts, and blood began to streak sweaty faces caked with the dust raised by shuffling feet. As the crowd approached Moake Crossing, a half mile beyond Crenshaw, McDowell was bleeding from several head wounds. A cork leg made it impossible for him to keep the pace the captors had set.

“We ought to hang that old peglegged son-of-a-bitch,” someone muttered.

Several times the superintendent faltered and almost fell; each time his captors jabbed him with rifle barrels and jerked him to his feet.

At Moake Crossing he stopped. “I can’t walk any farther,” he groaned.

The burly man who had talked about stopping the breed stepped up. “You bastard,” he snarled, “I’m going to kill you and use you for bait to catch the other scabs.”

He took one of McDowell’s arms and motioned to another man in the mob to take the other. When the crowd moved on the three men started down a crossroad. Before the prisoners had covered a hundred yards they heard shots from the direction in which McDowell had been taken.

“There goes your God-damned superintendent,” one of the mob members boasted. “That’s what we’re going to do to you fellows, too.”

A farmer living near by also heard the shots. After a safe interval he walked down the crossroad. There lay McDowell, two bullet holes in his chest. He was dead.

At the powerhouse,
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a mile farther on, the procession came to a halt.

“We’ll take four scabs down the road, kill them, and come back and get four more and kill them,” the leader of the column announced.

At that moment an automobile came up, and a man with an air of authority stepped out. Several of the prisoners heard him referred to as “Hugh Willis,” and “the president.”

“Listen, don’t you go killing these fellows on a public highway,” the frightened captives heard him say. “There are too many women and children around to do that. Take them over in the woods and give it to them. Kill all you can.”

With that, he drove away.

Across the tracks and to the north of the powerhouse was a strip of woodland, green with the fresh foliage of early summer, lush with the undergrowth of many years. Into it the mob herded its captives. In less than three hundred feet they came to a stout fence strung with four strands of barbed wire. A big, bearded man in overalls and a slouch hat called out:

“Here’s where you run the gantlet. Now, damn you, let’s see how fast you can run between here and Chicago, you damned gutter-bums!”

He fired. An instant later the woods rang with rifle and pistol shots. Several of the terrified strikebreakers fell. Those who escaped the first volley leaped for the fence, vaulting it or tearing their way through the barbs.

Sherman Holman, a mine guard, went down in the first fusil-lade. As he dropped, he fell across the arm of the assistant superintendent, Shoemaker, who was wounded and unconscious. One of the mob came up and kicked Shoemaker’s body.

“The son-of-a-bitch is still breathing,” he said. “Anybody got a shell?”

A man with a revolver stooped over and sent a bullet into the assistant superintendent’s brain.

William Cairns, another guard, was part way through the fence before his clothing caught. While he struggled to free himself he was shot twice. He fell, but he could still see and hear what went on around him. Not far away a strikebreaker, spattered with blood, leaned against a tree, screaming. With every scream someone hit him. One of the mob lost patience.

“You big son-of-a-bitch, we can kill you,” he said. Then he drew his pistol, and fired.

The strikebreaker crumpled to the ground.

Edward Rose, also a guard, wriggled through the fence, but not far beyond it tripped and fell. With the attackers close behind his only chance was to lie still and hope that he would be taken for dead. The bearded man who had fired the first shot noticed him.

“By God! Some of ’em are breathing,” he announced. “They’re hell to kill, ain’t they?”

He fired, hitting Rose in the back. The wounded man remained conscious. From the ground he could see boots swing as their wearers kicked men who had been shot, and he could hear pistols crack when bodies gave signs of life. The shooting moved into the distance, but now and then a faint scream gave notice that some terrified fugitive had been trapped. Finally the noise died away.

Miraculously, some of the strikebreakers emerged from the barbed-wire fence with only cuts and scratches. Most of them simply deferred their fate.

Between the powerhouse woods and Herrin lay a strip of timber known, from its owner, as the Harrison woods. About 8.30 in the morning Harrison and his son, working in the barn lot, heard shooting to the southeast. As they turned in that direction they saw a man running toward them, with fifteen or twenty
others in pursuit. Several of the pursuers stopped and fired. The fugitive fell. The Harrisons watched three or four men drag the body into the timber. A few minutes later another group came up with two prisoners at gunpoint. They too disappeared in the trees. Shots followed. After a safe interval father and son walked to the spot where the men had entered the woods. There they found a body hanging from a small tree. Three other bodies lay beneath the dead man’s feet.

One of those who vaulted the fence at the powerhouse was Patrick O’Rourke, a mine guard from Chicago. In the woods he was hit twice, but since he was still conscious and able to move, he hid in the underbrush and his pursuers missed him. When they had gone he started up a road toward Herrin. On a bend a car caught him by surprise. He ran to a near-by farmhouse and hid in the cellar, but the occupants of the automobile had seen him. All were armed, and he had no choice but to surrender when they ordered him out of his hiding-place. As he emerged, one of the men hit him over the head with a pistol butt, and then they dragged him to their car.

By this time other cars had stopped and a small crowd had gathered. Some wanted to shoot the captive, others to hang him. During the argument a newcomer reported that five more prisoners were being held at the schoolhouse in Herrin. O’Rourke’s captors decided to take him there.

In the schoolyard the prisoners—now, with O’Rourke, six in number—were forced to take off their shoes. Someone in the mob made one of the captives, a World War veteran, remove his army shirt. Then all were ordered to crawl on their hands and knees. After fifty or sixty feet they were allowed to walk again, though still without their shoes.

The crowd, some two hundred in number, headed for the Herrin cemetery, a mile distant. They were in a vicious mood, kicking and beating the bleeding prisoners as they stumbled along the road. Even the children—and there were many in the mob—yelled “scab” and other epithets at the captives.

At the cemetery, the procession halted. As the prisoners stood on the highway bordering the burial ground, several members of the mob came up with a rope and yoked the six men together. Once more they were ordered to move on, but they had covered only a short distance when word spread that the sheriff was coming. Taunts came from the crowd:

“God damn you, if you’ve never prayed before you’d better do it now!” and in derision: “Nearer my God to Thee!”

Locale of the Herrin Massacre. September 21–2, 1922

Two or three shots were fired. O’Rourke, hit again, fell to the ground, pulling the other five with him. More pistols cracked, and the stricken men writhed in agony. After their bodies were quiet one member of the mob filled the magazine of his revolver and methodically fired into each inert form.

In a few minutes three of the men on the ground showed signs of life. Thereupon one of the bystanders drew a heavy pocket-knife, knelt, and slashed the throats of those who still lived.

About 9.30 Don Ewing, a Chicago newspaperman, arrived at the cemetery. O’Rourke and a man named Hoffman, both partly conscious, were calling for water. Ewing found a small pail, filled it at a near-by house, and started to give Hoffman a drink.

“Keep away, God damn you!” a bystander warned, and backed the threat with a cocked rifle.

A young woman holding a baby taunted the dying man: “I’ll see you in hell before you get any water.” As she spoke, she casually put her foot, and part of her weight, on the man’s body. Blood bubbled from his wounds.