"Lynch-law Must Go!":
Race, Citizenship, and the Other
in an American Coal Mining Town
CAROLINE A. WALDRON
"We believe we should welcome every good citizen from the old
world among us. But when the slum of scum of the old world lands on our
shores and brings with him low, vicious murderous habits, and attempts
to strike down the rights of American citizens, whether black or white,
he should be put behind the bars or exiled and sent back to his native
country if it takes the whole United States army to do it. The rights
of American citizens who love their country and obey the laws thereof,
are more sacred than the rights of any murderous lawbreaking dago the
Almighty has ever made or ever will make." The Weekly Call, Topeka,
Kansas (in response to events at Spring Valley, Illinois). "The counsel
for the prosecution …indulged in remarks and gestures and exclamations
calculated to influence the minds of the jury, to influence them against
the Defendants and to influence their action, and to rouse race prejudice
and passion" (Spring Valley rioters response to the guilty verdict in
the county court).
ON A HOT SUMMER Sunday morning in 1895 immigrant and native-born white
residents in Spring Valley, Illinois, a coal mining town one hundred miles
southwest of Chicago, gathered around the city hall for a meeting. "There
was a consultation of the leaders" who "resolved to march on the negro
quarter of the town and wipe the colored population off the map." Led
by a brass band playing "several national anthems," the mob of Italian,
French, Polish, Lithuanian, Belgian, and other ethnic miners headed for
the African American neighborhood, the "Location," about one mile west
of the center of town. It was 10:30 a.m. when they arrived and started
the attack. "As each house was reached the rioters smashed the windows,
and where doors were locked they broke them down. The interiors were ransacked,
the women insulted and the men dragged forth, clubbed and shot." By 1
o'clock, the first day of the riot was over. One hundred blacks had fled
to a neighboring village for refuge. During the day, and through the night,
fifty picketers stood guard at the edges of the Location to ensure that
African American residents could not return to their homes. Within a month,
blacks brought their attackers to criminal court and, as a result, eight
of the rioters were sent to the state penitentiary.
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