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lynching of Robert Prager, the United Mine Workers, and the problems of patriotism in 1918, The

Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, Winter 2003 by Schwartz, E A

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Jokerst understood the lynching itself as essentially accidental-an outgrowth of the "patriotic" atmosphere in Collinsville and the prevalence of alcohol. He remembered that his father said that "it wasn't very abnormal, especially around taverns, to have someone recite the Pledge of Allegiance or sing America the Beautiful, you know, and that's what they were doing when they walked him down Main Street barefooted that evening, wrapped with a flag."

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In 1918, it seems, Collinsville was drenched in alcohol-a part of the culture of the immigrant miners. "Those miners, you know, are not-I hate to say this because my grandfather was one, too-but they were not really a well-educated people ... at the time of Prager. ... I think there was probably a tavern on every corner and two in the middle of the block," Jokerst said. "The coal miners, they'd come out of the coal mine and [that was] the first place they'd stop, spend their money they were making during the day. ... That was about all the entertainment there was in the town other than maybe a baseball game in the summertime."

Jokerst gave a tour of the route Prager was made to march the night he was hanged. It began in the parking lot at the Catholic church on Vandalia Street near, he said, "what we call the Y-Vandalia, Clay Street, and then going up to Main Street. ... all the miners used to walk down the street here heading out of town to the mine, Lumaghi mines, down below the Lebanon road." At one time, trolley cars shuttled down Vandalia Street en route from Edwardsville to St. Louis and back. Prager had lived in a room in a house across Vandalia Street from the church, "a two-story house built sort of on the French type with a second-floor balcony." The house is no longer there. The space it occupied has become a parking lot for a tire store.

The day he was hanged, Prager was made to kiss the flag in Maryville. Then he went back to his room in the house on Vandalia Street.

After a time his tormenters followed. "Maybe three or four guys met out here in a tavern north of town," Jokerst said. "They came here and they stood in the street and hollered for him." Prager came out on the balcony. They wanted him to kiss the flag. He agreed to come down if they would not hurt him. He kissed the flag again. But they weren't satisfied. They took Prager up Vandalia to Main, "and this was paved, and it was cold, you know, when you're barefooted, and the temperature had to be probably in the forties." On Main Street, there were "taverns everywhere. ... There was a tavern here, a tavern here, there was a tavern on this next corner, Blaha's- just loaded with those kind of places." By the time they reached the Miner's Institute, a theater built not long before with money raised by miners, spectators had gathered.17

Jokerst said, "I've talked to a number of people who were lining the streets and honestly saw it, I mean, there were a lot of people that came." It was at the Miner's Institute that "it started, the singing and so on. ... They came down the street here, and of course as they were singing and hollering, and he had a flag around him, different people started to congregate along the sidewalks. ... By that time the group instead of being five or six was like maybe fifty." The mayor, who was also a doctor, came out of a tavern across the street from the Miner's Institute, saw what was happening, "walked across the street in this block to his [doctor's] office, and called the police station, which was just around the corner there ... in the city hall." Two policemen "came over and just walked into the crowd, grabbed ahold of Prager, and said, 'Come on. We're taking you to jail.' And those guys didn't say a whole lot about it, seeing the policemen."

lynching of Robert Prager, the United Mine Workers, and the problems of patriotism in 1918, The

Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, Winter 2003 by Schwartz, E A

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