Young Seth Glenn Unnamed Compiler (1 results)

Hardcover. Condition: Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Clear plastic dust wrapper. Presumed First Edition, First printing. The format is approximately 5.5 inches by 8.5 inches. 253, [3] pages. Illustrations. Biography of a Prohibition Agent and Klan raider; the book contains much pro-Klan rhetoric. Seth Glenn Young was born 1887 in Kansas. He made his early reputation as a Federal agent tracking down draft dodgers in the southern states during WWI. In 1920 he went to work for the Treasury Department's Prohibition Unit. Four months later he found himself on trial for the murder of bootlegger during a still raid. He was found not guilty but the agency fired him. Shortly after that, he was recruited by the Klu Klux Klan in 1923 to clean up the stills and booze problem in Williamson County. He made hundreds of arrests and led violent raids on people in their homes who only made wine, and from there it only got worse. He eventually went too far and even the Klan ejected him. Glenn Young and his second wife were fired upon from an automobile. His knee was shattered; his young wife was blinded by shotgun pellets. In 1925 at the European Hotel in Herrin, IL., Young met his death in a shootout with Ora Thomas. Thomas also died in the shootout along with two others. Glen Young's funeral was an extravaganza with a church full of flowers and a long cortege; the service was concluded by reading of the Klan burial ritual by the light of a burning cross. It was followed by a procession of Klansmen in full Klan regalia down Herrin's streets. Young's body was placed in an imposing mausoleum in the Herrin cemetery. Over 15,000 Klansmen and Klan sympathizers attended his funeral, where he was buried in the purple robe of a Kleagle. During the 1920s, southern Illinois experienced its own form of lawlessness during prohibition, an era when the federal ban on alcohol helped create a who new class of criminal organizations and activities. Like Chicago, southern Illinois had its own form of gang leaders who tried to dominate the profits made from the illegal production and distribution of alcohol. It was also during these chaotic times that S. Glenn Young rose to power in southern Illinois. This is what eventually led to some the bloodiest gun battles ever recorded within the United States. Some of which required the Illinois National Guard to restore peace. It should be remembered that Williamson County in 1922 was in the throes of lawlessness. The Herrin Mine Massacre occurred in this year, Prohibition and bootlegging were in full swing and gangsters were in full control of prostitution, alcohol distribution and gambling houses. Numerous local, county and state officials were known to be on the take or under Klan control and many of the counties citizens were fed up with local authority's lack of control. Williamson County was ripe for the Klan's picking. Paul Angle maintained in Bloody Williamson that the county had provided a fertile field for establishment and growth of the Ku Klux Klan. The area was predominantly fundamentalist Protestant and fervently patriotic, and these factors contributed to prejudices and intolerance. They also contributed to fanatical support of Prohibition laws. Many citizens believed that the Klan offered a way to clean up Williamson County and redeem it from its shame. Whatever the reason for its success, the Ku Klux Klan was already more firmly entrenched in the county than anyone except the Klan itself, realized. On May 25, 1923, five thousand Klansmen gathered in an open field near Marion and initiated two hundred members. It was indeed apparent that some of the county's most respected citizens were aligned with the KKK. In Washington, by means which have never been disclosed, the group met S. Glenn Young, a former member of the Prohibition Unit of the Treasury Department, and persuaded himâ"probably without much effortâ"to undertake the purge of Williamson County. He returned in November, 1923, and within a month had bought hard liquor at more than a hundred "soft drink parlors"â"evidence he took back to Washington and used to persu.