In 2009, John Griswold, Senior Lecturer of English at the University of Illinois, published two books related to the small city of Herrin in Southern Illinois — one fiction, the other nonfiction. The fiction book is called A Democracy of Ghosts and is a historical novel about the Herrin Massacre, an event that took place in 1922. The Herrin Massacre was, in part, a coal miner strike gone horribly wrong when union miners — along with area citizens, including children — tortured and murdered strikebreakers, many of them from upstate. For a previous Smile Politely interview with Griswold on A Democracy of Ghosts, click here.
The nonfiction book is called Herrin: The Brief History of an Infamous American City, and is a straightforward, comprehensive history of the city. I spoke with Griswold recently — focusing on his nonfiction book — about Herrin in general. For more information on Griswold’s work as a whole, visit his website.
Truth and fiction
I asked Griswold about the relationship between his two Herrin books. I also wondered which book he decided to write first. He answered:
Fiction can sink into characters’ thoughts, memories, and views of the world in a way that nonfiction — if it’s going to stick to historical sources — can’t easily do. That was my interest, so the novel came to me first, and I spent a number of years working on and researching it, and it was published first. Then, when The History Press offered me the chance to write a brief nonfiction book on the town itself, I took it.
Good times, bad times
In the nonfiction book, Griswold notes that Herrin went through a period of prosperity around the turn of the century because the coal industry was booming in Southern Illinois. There was a sense of promise and a hope for the future that were never quite realized. The coal industry declined; the Great Depression hit Southern Illinois hard in the 1930s; and although Herrin was able to attract industry in later decades, things never quite turned out the way they were supposed to. I asked Griswold if having early good times in the city only made the later bad times more bitter. He responded:
Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, right? I wouldn’t wish bad times continuously for any community. And in the book, I say, ‘As Herrin goes, so goes America.’ The Twentieth Century was called the American Century, and now it seems our power and influence are waning. Whatever you ask about Herrin and hard times, you might ask about the nation itself.
“Human beings under stress”
One of the themes throughout the nonfiction book is how Herrin — despite the notoriety it earned after the massacre in 1922 — is much like the rest of America. It was and is a pretty typical place, yet it was also a town where hundreds of citizens turned up to spit on and curse the bodies of murdered strikebreakers after the massacre. But that was 1922 and this is now, right?
In Herrin in 1922, the line between civilization and savagery got crossed. I asked Griswold how close the nation is to that kind of savagery again today and what he feels it might take to put a typical American City there. He replied:
It would take human beings under enough stress. I was watching 60 Minutes last night, and Steve Kroft was interviewing Ben Bernanke, who pointed out that at no time in our history have we had such a disparity between those who have, and those who have not. Even Bernanke hinted darkly at what will result if that’s the new condition of America. Disparity has been extreme in other times — the Gilded Age in America in the 1890s for instance — but the disparity now may indeed prove worse. Cable TV and cheap fast food for all might look like democracy, but it’s mostly mediocrity and waste. In any case, if extreme disparity is going to be the new normal, we will see more social disruption. There may be violence; there may be protests; there may be all sorts of things we’ve forgotten can happen. Herrin’s story continues to be useful for our memories.
An image problem
In the years after the massacre, many in Herrin wanted to rehabilitate the image of their city after national bad publicity. Disastrously, this desire fit in with the law and order attitudes of temperance advocates that included the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan gained power throughout the Midwest during Prohibition, but became a problem itself for its zealousness against those who didn’t have the same ideas about law, order, and the American way. This struggle too played out in Herrin, in the latter half of the 1920s, when gun battles raged on the streets between the Klan and bootleggers.
Griswold said of this historical situation:
It really is an American problem, and maybe especially a Midwestern problem, this dual sense of ‘you can’t tell me what I can do’ and righteousness. The Klan claimed to want enforcement of laws such as the Volstead Act, which were flagrantly broken. But their attempt to clean things up in Herrin — and in cities like Chicago and Indianapolis — quickly became vigilantism, corruption, and ethnic persecution.
Separateness
Perhaps the most obvious difference between Southern Illinois and the rest of the state is geological: it’s hilly in the south, not flat. But is there a difference in more than just landscape? Having lived in Carbondale during the ‘90s myself, it seemed to me that people in the area often thought of themselves as being part of Little Egypt more than Illinois. Mining, rather than farming, was traditionally dominant; St. Louis, rather than Chicago, was the city most in the collective consciousness, etc. During the time of the Herrin massacre, there was a bitterness among people in Southern Illinois that not only were they being exploited by ruthless mining companies, but these ruthless mining companies were from the great northern industrial cities. I asked Griswold if any of that bitterness is still present in the region today. He said:
There’s still a sense of separateness; I don’t know that it’s actually bitterness. They call the kind of wealth that coal mining generates ‘extractive wealth,’ and it is exactly that. The wealth, in the form of commodity coal, was extracted from Southern Illinois by absentee mine owners with no stake in the health of workers or the long-term growth of local communities, and shipped out on railroad cars. This coal not only helped build regional cities like Chicago, but also fueled other industrial processes around the country. America owes places like Herrin a large debt, but once they get used up or worn out, they’re largely forgotten.
There is a great difference between Southern Illinois, Central Illinois, and Chicago. Some of that difference has to do with migration patterns and culture. Southern Illinois is more mid-southern, riverine, than it is of the Great Lakes. But then I’d say most places in the state have not profited equally over time, politically or economically, with Chicago.
A writer from Herrin writing about Herrin
Griswold is from Herrin himself, and I asked how coming from the city affected the writing of his two books. Did it help that the city he was writing about was his hometown? What about doing the research itself? He responded:
I left Herrin in 1982, after growing up there, to go into the Army, and I’ve never lived in Southern Illinois since. There were even a bunch of years when I didn’t go back very often because I lived at a distance, and my family were all gone from town. But the voices and attitudes of the people I grew up with were, and probably always will be, with me. In the middle of my researching the novel, my wife and I moved up here [Champaign-Urbana], and my visits to Herrin increased, since it’s only a three-hour drive. I reacquainted myself with people, places, and events, and spent time in the library where I spent so many hours as a kid. They have a history room there now, which is a tremendous resource, and I used it for both books. Here on campus I also had access to the Illinois Historical Survey, where curator John Hoffmann offered excellent support and encouragement. It’s also a short drive to archives in Springfield and Chicago, which were important to my finishing the books.
In conclusion
Griswold’s two books — fiction and nonfiction — offer insights on the southern part of the state and (working from Griswold’s assertion of “As Herrin goes, so goes America”) on the nation itself. They work separately or as complements to each other. I’d recommend reading both — the history first and A Democracy of Ghosts second. You’ll get more out of the novel knowing its context going in.