20th century crime
A01=John A. Beadles
African American
Author_John A. Beadles
Black struggles
Category=NHK
Category=WQH
corrupt police
easy to read
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
famous hanging
Henry Salzner
infamous riot
interesting story
mob mentality
River town history
Small town murder
violent city
Will Froggie James
Product details
- ISBN 9780809370054
- Weight: 513g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 28 Aug 2019
- Publisher: Southern Illinois University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Packed with villains, victims, and heroes, Stained with Blood and Tears recounts the story of what has been called the “equal opportunity” lynchings of Will “Froggie” James, who was black, and Henry Salzner, a white man, in the rowdy river town of Cairo, Illinois, on November 11, 1909. This book is the first to focus on one of the most infamous nights of lynching in the history of the United States, when about one thousand men and women were transformed into a murderous mob. The book also details a lesser-known attempted lynching of a suspected purse snatcher by another mob about ninety days later. That mob was beaten back by about a dozen mostly African American deputies and a white sheriff. Stained with Blood and Tears ends with the saga of the killing of a Cairo policeman in the police station by the sheriff from a neighboring county over an incident that began in a Cairo brothel. The book thoroughly examines a dark side of Cairo’s past when it had a Jim Crow mind-set and crooked policemen and was awash in liquor and teeming with prostitutes and gambling houses. The violence of the era led the town’s Catholic priest to lament, “Must this fair city of ours go ever in garments spattered with blood?”
John A. Beadles is the author of A History of Southernmost Illinois, published in 1990. He began his teaching career at high schools at Lakeview in Decatur, Illinois; Pontiac Township in Pontiac, Illinois; and Bishop DuBourg in St. Louis, Missouri. He has also taught at Syracuse University, Cazenovia College for Women, Lane College/United Negro College Fund, the State University of New York (Geneseo), St. Louis Community College (Meramec), and Kennesaw State University (Georgia).
