The Illinois Valley was originally inhabited by Indigenous peoples before the lands fertile soil and location near the Illinois River attracted European settlers in the late 1600s. The Illinois Valley Community College district consists of LaSalle, Bureau, Putnam and parts of surrounding counties. This guide will give a brief overview of the parts of Illinois Valley history which have had long lasting effects on the community for people who identify as Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) in hopes of fostering open conversations and reflection about racial equity to build a stronger, more empathetic environment in our community.
In early August of 1895, tensions ran high causing a riot in Spring Valley. In the 1880s, Spring Valley Coal Company began business by advertising nationally and internationally bringing people from all different regions of the world including Illinois, Iowa, Colorado, and Pennsylvania, and from countries Italy, France, Belgium, Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Russia, Austria and Slovenia. As a unionized company, when the coal company miners went on strike in 1894, this prompted managers in Spring Valley to hire black workers in their place causing an upheaval against African Americans of the town.
The riot began with workers marching to manager S. M. Dalzell's house begging to fire African American mine workers after an alleged, and unfounded, attack of an Italian man by 5 African American men. When Dalzell refused, the riot became worse and the mayor of Spring Valley had decided to cancel his request for police aid. Miners held a mass meeting on Sunday, August 4th, of more than a thousand participants and decided that any African American inhabitants would have "...until five o'clock Tuesday evening to leave the city and to carry off their effects. Anything left would be declared confiscated and destroyed..." The African Americans fled to Seatonville to hold their own meeting to organize armed resistance.
Learn more by reading 'Lynch-law Must Go!':Race, Citizenship, and the Other in an American Coal Mining Town by Caroline A. Waldron.
What is a 'Sundown Town'?
Sundown towns were all white towns where there were unspoken rules about black people not being welcome. Sometimes, these towns would have signs near their entrances for African Americans that said things like, "Don't let the sun go down on you in this town." There were an estimated 507 sundown towns in Illinois alone, and included other states towns such as Indiana, Oregon, and other northern states.
LaSalle-Peru Timeline:
1860s: Despite a new major railroad connecting LaSalle-Peru with Chicago, the population of African American's was zero.
1864: A group of LaSalle resident "Copperheads" (Peace Democrats who opposed the American Civil War) attacked and drove out a group of African Americans travelling from Mendota to sign up for the army.
1889: African American population in LaSalle and Peru still at zero, and Sundown Town signs are put up at entrances of towns and remained standing until the end of WWII in the 1940s.
1970: 5 African Americans reside in LaSalle, despite new routes 6 and 51.
1998: LaSalle Peru Township High School gets it's first non-white student.
Learn more by reading Sundown Towns : A Hidden Dimension of American Racism by James W. Loewen
Stealing Indian Women: Native Slavery in the Illinois Country by Illinois Valley Chamber of Commerce and Economic Development. "Illinois Valley
History." Illinois Valley Area Chamber of Commerce and Economic
Development, www.ivaced.org/illinois-valley-history.
Loewen, James W. Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism. New York,
New Press, 2018. ProQuest Ebook Central, ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ivcc/
detail.action?docID=5275133.
Waldron, Caroline A. "Lynch-Law Must Go!': Race, Citizenship, and the Other in
an American Coal Mining Town." Journal of American Ethnic History, vol. 20,
no. 1, Fall 2000, p. 50. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/
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