Delos Duty Bloody Williamson Legacy (Throwback Thursday)

Being a true Southerner, I don't lack for colorful family history. 

The family name is connected to military skirmish that earned the City of Charlotte her "Hornet's Nest" nick name during the Revolutionary War. 

Family Confederate Veterans and the cemeteries that honor them reach from Gettysburg to New Orleans. 

Yet family history from the civil war into the 1930s remains rather obscure. 

But out of this distant past emerges the story of my grandfather's cousin who stood against racism and the Klan during the era of great lawlessness. The period of history that gave us the "roaring twenties", vigilante justice, lynching and characters like Bonnie and Clyde and Al Capone.

As kids my mother and her sister were often warned "not to look" in grandpa's closet. Hard to say if that was fact or metaphor but Southerners who often spoke out against the Klan, would in the darkness of night gather for a cross burning when necessary.

In the early 1920's one job you wouldn't want was that of Illinois State's Attorney in Williamson County, at the far southern tip of Illinois. The job, the equivalent of today's Mecklenburg County District Attorney meant your life was on the line every day. 

Delos Leon Duty was born Oct. 5, 1882, the son of Hiram P. and Paradine (Parks) Duty and one of 11 children. (My great-grandfather and great grandmother).

Duty's desire for action came at any early age. He was just 16 when he tried to join the Army to fight in the Spanish-American War, but my great-grandfather refused to sign an age waiver, so he ended up attending Valparaiso University in northwest Indiana and graduated with a pharmacy degree.

On Feb. 3, 1904, Duty married Retta C. Creal, but, by 1906, the couple had separated. Together, they had one daughter, Helen Duty Bunker, who died early in life, leaving a son, Art Bunker. 

His home life in a shambles, Duty left for the Oklahoma Territory and worked briefly as a cowboy on the massive Waldron Ranch in Canada. A few years later he would return to Marion, Illinois to work as a clerk for Fred J. Haeberle Drugstore, operating at 200 N. Market Street. 

My grandmother often described Delos as a "George Bailey" type always full of dreams and ideas, longing for travel and adventure from behind the drugstore counter.

But the drugstore also severed as a springboard of sorts because it was a center of influence in the small southern town of Marion, which was also the Williamson County seat.

When the Haeberle family left Marion in 1908, Duty bought the drugstore, and later the building, founding Duty Drug Company. He converted the one-story building at the corner of North Market and Union streets, adding a second floor to accommodate law offices. (His name still adorns the building) 

While operating his pharmacy, Duty took an interest in law and began a correspondence course through Lincoln University Law School in Jefferson, Missouri -- he never attended a physical law school -- but under the tutelage of local attorneys and judges Rufus Neely, D.T. Harwell and William Oscar Potter, Delos Duty was admitted to the Illinois Bar in 1915. 

That same year, Delos Duty who was well liked and popular ran as the Republican nominee for state's attorney, but he was beaten by Democrat Ed M. Spiller by 39 votes.

Duty interrupted his law career in 1918 during World War I, when he enlisted in the US Army at Jefferson Barracks, Missouri, and served as a captain in Company M, Egyptian Volunteer Infantry.

In 1920, he ran again of the state's attorney job and was elected state's attorney for Williamson County. His time as prosecutor would mark some of the most tumultuous times the rural county has ever seen. The violence that resulted in the moniker "Bloody Williamson" marked his tenure as state's attorney.

After Duty was elected state's attorney in 1920, he went to work on a double murder case of  two Herrin teenagers Tony Hemphill age 17 and Amiel Calcaterra age 14. Hemphill and Calcaterra’s throats had been cut and their bodies shoved in a shallow grave. The suspects were Italian emigrants and within hours a mob had formed at the jail demanding the police turn over the suspects.

In the confusion of the gathered mob Duty arranged for the suspects to be moved to a secure location until a proper trial could be held. 

Duty would obtain convictions and death penalties against both men. One of them, Frank Bianca, hanged himself in the county jail cell on South Van Buren Street. The other, Settimi DeSantis, was hanged legally on South Monroe Street on February 11, 1921, at the location of the original county jail.

During the 1920s wars between mine owners who employed strike breakers and the unionized miners in  the north were well known. But in the rural south these outbreaks of violence were typically shrouded in great mystery and folklore. 

The owners of the Lester Mine located in Williamson County knew little about southern culture and ran roughshod over most southern traditions, for example the mine operated 7 days a week. Sunday included. So when the mine threaten to bring in outside laborers the local folk would have nothing to do with it.

After weeks without pay, or food Marion families had endured enough and vowed to take back the mine by violence if necessary.

Despite Duty's efforts to avert violence, the Lester mine massacre also known as the Herrin Massacre culminated with the lynching and murder of 23 strike breakers and their security team. 

In the end Duty's efforts to obtain convictions against several local citizens in the 23 deaths were thwarted. When the grand jury finally agreed to indict dozens of well known citizens there was a profound amount of outrage despite the overwhelming evidence. 

The gathered crowd awaits the grand jury indictment in the Herrin Massacre.

At trial all of the participants in the mob violence were acquitted thanks to bribes and purchased alibis.

When the mines softened their stance against the unions in the south the violence died down, and so Duty turned his attention to the Ku Klux Klan. 

At a time when vigilante justice and mob rule was the primary form of law in the rural south, Delos Duty saw to it that no one would be denied a fair trial. Standing up for the rights of the accused particularly when the accused was a man or women of color was not a popular position. It was during this period that he became a clay pigeon for snipers who took potshots at him almost nightly.

He was wounded by gunfire from speeding autos on numerous occasions while walking from his law office on North Market Street to the courthouse on the public square. He recalled being hit three times in the arms, in both legs and once in the neck. He also recalled purchasing a couple of .45's and after that the shooting stopped.

Duty never quit the battle for what he believed to be right, despite threats on his life. 

As the lawlessness of the 20's and 30s gave way to the war years Duty continued to practice law as a well respected defense attorney and did so well into his late 70's Often traveling to the State's Capitol in Springfield to present cases to the state appeals court.

He passed away in Marion Memorial Hospital on December. 21, 1965, at the age of 83.

Duty was cremated and his ashes were placed in the niche of a stone at Pleasant Grove Cemetery. An inscription on his monument states, "As a scientist I have always been in favor of cremation. In the far distant future I believe and hope it will become a universal law. My most ardent wish has long been that my ashes rest above the bones of my ancestors." And they do.

Perhaps the most vivid portrayal of his service as a state's attorney can be found in the book, "Bloody Williamson," by Paul M. Angle. Published originally in 1952 which reads like fiction worthy of a screenplay.