Slot Machine Raid ca 1953 shown are Jack Stephens and Yabe Edwards
A raid into unspecified establishments in the city around 1958 yielded this large pile of scrap when the Marion Police Department was done with it. Shown are OfficerJack Stephens and Chief of Police Charles Edwards, both Marion residents.
(Photo courtesy of Williamson County Historical Society)
1922 crowd awaiting Herrin Mine Grand Jury on Public Square, Marion, Illinois
In 1922, a crowd on the public square in Marion, Illinois anxiously awaits the outcome of a Grand Jury to hand down verdicts related to the Herrin Mine massacres which occured earlier in the year. Scab mine workers who had been called in to work the mines during strikes at a mine just outside Herrin, Illinois had been brutally murdered and tortured.
(Photo from the Williamson County Historical Society)
The Chicago and Big Muddy Mine was opened in 1900 by Samuel H. Goodall as part of the Chicago and Big Muddy Coal and Coke Company, with headquarters in Chicago, and was one of the largest mines located near the edge of Marion, Illinois. Continue reading
Lynch Mob Gathers ca 1916
This photo, circa 1918, of the east side of the first block of North Market Street just off the square shows a lynch mob gathering. According to information on the back of the photo the man on the balcony is holding a machine gun. Blowups of the picture show a white man in a dark suit holding a black man in a white shirt by the arm under the balcony. The crowd is split on racial lines with blacks facing south toward the camera and whites facing north with their backs towards the camera. Continue reading
Joab Goodall 1904
Joab Goodall started the first telephone company in Marion in the late 1880’s. His first telephone building was located at 102 N. Liberty St. The Ohio and Mississippi Valley Telephone Co. operated with Goodall as president until 1917, when they sold to the Murphysboro Telephone Co. A. B. Minton was president and principal stockholder of this company and W. C. Alexander was an official of the company. Continue reading