Overview

Southwestern Illinois experienced a plethora of violence during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Settlers and Native Americans clashed at the Wood River Settlement, while Abraham Lincoln dueled on a Mississippi River island. Racial strife led to the lynching of a Black schoolteacher in Belleville in 1903 and a deadly riot in East St. Louis fourteen years later. Benbow City was a latter-day Wild West town of saloons, gambling dens and brothels, and Pere Marquette State Park screened a cache of Nike missiles. From the birthplace of Martin Luther King Jr.'s killer to the mystery surrounding Jean Lafitte's grave, John Dunphy examines the bloody ledger of southwestern Illinois.

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9781467147910

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Born in Alton, Illinois, and now residing in the village of Godfrey, John J. Dunphy is a summa cum laude graduate of Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville and attended that university's graduate school on an academic fellowship. He taught writing at Lewis and Clark Community College for almost a decade and conducts numerous writers' workshops. Dunphy's books include Lewis and Clark's Illinois Volunteers and Unsung Heroes of the Dachau Trials: The Investigative Work of the U.S. Army 7708 War Crimes Group, 1945-1947, as well as two books for Arcadia/The History Press: From Christmas to Twelfth Night in Southern Illinois and Abolitionism and the Civil War in Southwestern Illinois. His poetry collections include Touching Each Tree, Stellar Possibilities and Dark Nebulae. He writes a weekly column for the (Alton, IL) Telegraph. He has owned the Second Reading Book Shop in Alton since 1987. The book shop's location served as an Underground Railroad station. Visit John J. Dunphy on Facebook.

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