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Criminal

Herrin Massacre

Criminal

Vox Media Podcast Network

Society & Culture, True Crime

4.739.4K Ratings

🗓️ 24 January 2020

⏱️ 28 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In the spring of 1922, the United Mine Workers of America announced a national strike. And then, that summer in Herrin, Illinois, 23 people were murdered over two days. Men, women, and children came out of their houses to watch, and in some cases, to take part in the violence. Scott Doody’s book is Herrin Massacre. Special thanks to the Special Collections Research Center at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, and Matt Gorzalski, and to John Griswold, who wrote Herrin: The Brief History of an Infamous American City. Say hello on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Sign up for our occasional newsletter, The Accomplice. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts: iTunes.com/CriminalShow. We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop.  Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Support for this show comes from Krakan.

0:03.0

Krypto is like the financial system, but different.

0:07.0

It doesn't care where you come from, what you look like, your credit score,

0:11.0

or your outrageous food delivery habits.

0:13.7

crypto is finance for everyone everywhere all the time.

0:18.4

Krakhan, see what crypto can be.

0:21.3

Don't invest unless you're prepared to lose all the money you invest.

0:25.0

This is a high-risk investment and you should not expect to be protected if something goes wrong. I always talked about how it's the best kept secret ever.

0:37.0

The people of Heron took those secrets in what they saw to their grave.

0:47.0

This is author Scott Duty.

0:49.0

In the summer of 1922, in a town called Heron in southern Illinois, 23 people were murdered over two days.

0:59.4

Men, women and children, came out of their houses to watch and in some cases to take part in the violence.

1:07.0

I don't understand how this just happens, how, was there any voice of reason in this whole thing?

1:14.0

See that, and I hear this in your voice, and it's what I learned through the four or five years of research.

1:20.0

You keep thinking, you know, we all grow up watching movies the guy in the black hat the guy in the white hat the good guy all movies in well so forth so on no

1:31.5

No one stepped forward No one stepped forward and no one would discuss it.

1:39.0

More than 50 years after the murders, two college students from Southern Illinois University

1:45.6

went to Heron and started asking people to talk about what had happened.

1:51.1

They literally drove over to Heron with an old school tape recorder and taped men at the local pool hall in downtown Heron in the 1970s, guys that were alive and had participated in the

2:05.8

massacre. Now had they thought about it, of course young people do crazy things

2:10.9

they would have never done that, but they actually got people to talk to them people do

2:13.4

things they would have never done that but they actually got people to talk to them about what had happened

...

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