With Prohibition and bootlegging in full swing, Williamson County was vulnerable to the influence of the Ku Klux Klan who promised to bring an end to rampant gambling, alcohol distribution and prostitution controlled by the Shelton and Birger outlaw gangs, not to mention corrupt officials.

A mass law and order meeting was held on the public square in Marion on August 20, 1923, with more than fifteen hundred voices “raised in protest against vice and corruption in Williamson County.” A rousing cheer went up from the crowd when one speaker, the Reverend P.R. Glotfelty, Methodist minister from Herrin, promised the county would be cleansed of iniquity, even if they had to do it themselves. Glotfelty, was likely a member of the Klan, as were quite a few ministers at this time period.

Glotfelty was adamantly opposed to two things—Catholicism and violation of Prohibition laws—and maintained that intentions of Herrin Catholics to build a new church were evil because most of the members of that parish were “Italian bootleggers”. He vowed publicly that the Catholic Church would never be built. The church was built anyway, of course, and was completed in 1926.

(Photos courtesy of the Williamson County Historical Society)