Illinoisans frequently find strength and unity in the diversity of their backgrounds and interests. However, too often their differences reach a flashpoint of violence and strife, characteristics which some observers find as American as apple pie.

Williamson and Franklin counties, deep in Egypt, suffered from 80 years of periodic conflict as a result of their special mix of people and circumstances. From the 1870s to the 1950s murder and its aftermath won the area national attention and overshadowed the positive developments which marked the same years.

The first historian of Williamson County chronicled some 495 assaults with a deadly weapon, 285 murderous assaults, and 50 murders which resulted in only six convictions between 1839 and 1876. The 1870s were marked by a vicious feud between the Bulliner and the Henderson families, the former immigrants from Tennessee and the latter from Kentucky. Hot-blooded, proud, and quick to resent an insult, an incident between the two in 1868 led to eight years of ambushes, killings, and resultant hangings. When the county historian concluded his account of the vendetta, he wrote: "With this, I seal the volume, and turn my eyes away from the bloody acts of depraved men, hoping with all the fervor of which my soul is capable, that God will add no other plague to our county. "

Peace lasted until the 1890s when the coal industry came to Egypt, noticeably short on ways to make a living. Samuel T. Brush organized the St. Louis and Big Muddy Coal Company in 1890 and sank the first shaft near Carterville in that year. In the spring of 1898 most of Brush's miners responded to a strike call from the United Mine Workers of America established a few years earlier. Brush imported black strikebreakers from the South, and between June and September of 1899 six black miners were killed and scores injured in the resultant rioting. Brush himself was attacked and beaten in Murphysboro.

Additional strife occurred in the Ziegler Coal Company mine Owned by Joseph Leiter. When his miners struck in 1904, Leiter imported guards and nonunion workmen, and the militia was called to preserve the peace. Operating with little attention to safety, some 83 miners were killed through accidents in Leiter's mine between 1905 and 1909 when it was closed permanently.

Violence returned to the coal mines with a brutal vengeance in 1922. The Southern Illinois Coal Company opened a strip mine in Williamson County in 1921; dismissed its union miners in June, 1922; and brought in strikebreakers and mine guards. On June 21 striking miners surrounded the mine, and in an exchange of gunfire two strikers were killed. When the strikebreakers surrendered to union miners and their promises of a truce, 20 of them were massacred with elemental violence. The grand jury indicted 262 persons for their roles in the Herrin Massacre without a single conviction.

In the spring of 1923 the Ku Klux Klan, 2000 strong, initiated 200 candidates in Marion, and appointed S. Glenn Young to take charge of its "law-enforcement program." He led a series of massive raids on bootleggers, took control of Williamson County for a time early in 1924, and was involved in a series of shootings and at least seven murders before he and two others were killed in a gunfight in January, 1925.

For the next 25 years a gang war with Charlie Birger and Carl, Earl, and Bernie Shelton playing prominent roles left a morgue full of bullet-ridden bodies throughout the area. At issue were the rich rewards of bootlegging and vice. As late as December, 1951, after most of the major participants were accounted for, the Shelton homestead was destroyed by fire.

For seven decades concern for the rule of law was overshadowed by semi-condoned mob rule. What explains this chronicle of violence? How can one understand the explosions of hatred among friendly, godfearing, polite people living together in small, quiet towns amidst a beautiful countryside?

Basically those public servants charged to assure respect for the law proved inadequate in the face of admittedly volatile tensions between union labor and "free enterprise," black men and white men, Protestants and Catholics, moralists and those boasting lax standards of conduct, "Americans" and foreigners, greed and poverty. These forces appeared in abundant and dangerous combination in Egypt, as they have in many other parts of the state; and the tolerance, compassion, and vigilance needed to moderate them simply was not present at critical times.