Robert Prager

Prager early life

Robert Paul Prager was born in Dresden, Germany on February 28, 1888. He emigrated to the United States in 1905, at the age of 17. An itinerant baker^[2] who had spent a year in an Indiana reformatory for theft, he was living in St. Louis when the US declared war on Germany on April 6, 1917.^[3]

Prager showed strong patriotism for his adopted country after President Woodrow Wilson asked congress to declare war on April 2, 1917. Prager took out his first citizenship papers the day after Wilson's war speech, registered for the draft and tried to enlist in the US Navy. He would also have a St. Louis baker, whom he lived with, arrested after he objected to Prager continuously displaying the American flag from his window.^[1]

Prager was rejected by the Navy due to medical reasons. After moving briefly to other towns in Missouri and Illinois, Prager landed in Collinsville, Illinois in the late summer of 1917. He took a job baking for an Italian baker named Lorenzo Bruno. In early 1918 in Collinsville, Prager learned of the high wartime wages miners were earning and began working in a laborer's position at the Donk Brothers Coal and Coke Co. Mine #2 in nearby Maryville, Illinois. But Prager was rejected for permanent membership as a coal miner in United Mine Workers of America Local 1802, perhaps due to his argumentative personality or socialist beliefs.^[2]

Collinsville war time labor background

Coal mining was the lifeblood of Collinsville in 1918, with seven mines in or around the city. More than half the city's male working population was employed at the mines, which also drew in a number of itinerant miners with no familial anchors to the community. Many of the miners were also immigrants or had at least one parent who was an immigrant, mostly from European nations. There were five locals of the United Mine Workers of America (UMW) in the Collinsville area and the miners dominated the community. Radical elements in the UMW unions caused a number of wildcat strike actions at Collinsville area coal mines in the summer and fall of 1917.^[2]

Almost concurrently with the wildcat strikes, a unionization strike at the St. Louis Lead Smelting and Refining plant (Lead Works) in Collinsville also energized many of the coal miners and other union members in the community. The strike turned violent at times, with Collinsville police officers and Madison County sheriff's deputies, mostly former miners themselves, siding with the striking workers from St. Louis Smelting and Refining and the coal miners who supported the unionization efforts. Strike-breaking employees going to and leaving the Lead Works were harassed by the union men and law officers on local streets and in streetcars.^[2]

The strike at the Lead Works bore some similarity to the East St. Louis Race Riots earlier in 1917. Tensions in East St. Louis were fueled by industrial interests which recruited black workers to break strikes in that community. White workers in Collinsville objected to the use of "imported" workers as had occurred in East St. Louis, Illinois, as many of those workers who came to Collinsville to fill the non-union jobs at St. Louis Smelting and Refining were black.^[2]

The wildcat coal mine strikes and unionization strike at St. Louis Louis Smelting and Refining served to radicalize and empower many of the Collinsville coal miners, as their actions in 1917-1918 were largely unimpeded by community leaders or local law enforcement.

Wartime patriotism and paranoia, nationally and in Collinsville

Largely due to efforts of the federal government, many U.S. residents were whipped into a patriotic frenzy during World War I. The Committee on Public Information (CPI) ostensibly sought to control American attitudes and win favor for U.S. involvement in the Great War, which had raged in Europe since 1914. From buttons to brochures to posters, the CPI touched every form of media it could to increase patriotism and support for the war effort. The CPI also controlled the release of news and photographs to newspapers and magazines. Meanwhile, the Espionage Act of 1917 made it a federal crime to do anything which might interfere with the military or even military recruitment, such as making statements which could discourage potential soldiers from registering for the draft or enlisting. The Espionage Act also prohibited mailing of any materials which might harm the government's war efforts.^[2]

Patriotic events from the June 5, 1917 National Draft Registration Day to the March 27, 1918 organizing meeting of the Collinsville Neighborhood Committee of the Illinois State Council of Defense were well attended and increased the flag-waving fervor in the community. A number of Collinsville men had enlisted, while many more were drafted to report for military service starting in September of 1917. Yet there were some indications the community did not fully support the war effort, including the failure to meet Liberty Bond sales quotas for both bond drives in 1917. Collinsville would suffer its first war death in November, 1917, when Leighton Evatt would die from pneumonia in France.^[2]

War charity events flourished in Collinsville as nearly every club or organization raised funds to support the soldiers or the military effort. The Red Cross was the leading war support organization locally, and would have nearly 4000 members by war's end. Though there were complaints about fuel and food conservation measures, most Collinsville residents complied with the guidelines rather than risk the wrath of super patriots who might question their loyalty.^[2]

In Collinsville and nationally, paranoia fed by government propaganda urged residents to be on constant alert for enemy spies. "Every German or Austrian in the United States, unless known by years of association to be absolutely loyal, should be treated as a potential spy," the Collinsville Advertiser newspaper reported on December 29, 1917. Nationally, Germans had fallen from being perhaps the most-respected immigrant group to the most persecuted. Nationally, German street names were changed and German language classes were dropped. Groups such as the All-Allied Anti-German League to the Boy Spies of America tracked down and reported any activity they thought suspicious.^[4]

In the coal fields of southern Illinois, miners administered justice against their enemies, real and perceived, by tar and feathering men and driving others out of town through mob harassment. A Lutheran minister from a Collinsville area church was forced to leave the community because he reportedly would not renounce his German citizenship. Throughout the nation, harassment of German immigrants and those of German descent peaked during early 1918.^[2]

Prager taken from his home

Prager's application to join UMW Local 1802 was rejected on April 3, 1918. After the union meeting that evening Prager was patriotically paraded near saloons in Maryville, then warned to leave that town. Prager was incensed about the rejection by Local 1802 and the subsequent loss of his job. On the morning of April 4 Prager drafted a letter to the Maryville miners complaining that he had been treated unfairly by Local 1802 President James Fornero. "I have been a union man all times and never once a scab," Prager said. He criticized thinking that he was a German sympathizer. "I am heart and soul for the good old USA. I am of German birth, of which accident I cannot help." On the afternoon of April 4 he posted copies of his critical letter near the Maryville mine and nearby saloons.^[2]

The Maryville miners were enraged to see Prager's letter posted outside the mine after their work day was done. A contingent of about six Maryville men went to Prager's Collinsville home in the 200 block of Vandalia Street, bringing with them dozens of men from a nearby Collinsville saloon. The men arrived at Prager's door about 9:45 p.m. and ordered him to leave town. Shortly thereafter the group told Prager to come out first and kiss the flag to show his patriotism. Prager was then told to remove his shoes and wrapped in the flag as he was paraded on Collinsville's Main Street past numerous saloons where miners and other working men had gathered. Many of them joined the mob, which now numbered about 300. At approximately 10 p.m. Prager was taken from the mob at Main and Seminary streets by three Collinsville policemen. The officers trotted him off to the relative safety of the jail in the basement of City Hall, three blocks away.^[2]

The mob reassembled on Main Street, and after some discussion several hundred men marched behind a US flag, singing The Star Spangled Banner, to the front steps of the City Hall. Mayor John H. Siegel and a few others, standing on the steps of City Hall, tried to appease the mob and urged the men to let federal authorities deal with Prager. If he was a German spy, perhaps he could provide important information to the federal investigators, they said. But the mob argued that the city officials were as pro-German as Prager. During the time the mob was in front of City Hall, there had reportedly been an ineffective attempt by police officers to take Prager away. This resulted in Prager being removed from a locked jail cell and hidden among sewer tiles in the basement of the building. At about the same time, the mayor was quietly informed that Prager had been taken from the building by federal authorities and Siegel made that announcement to the mob. But many in the mob did not believe the mayor and asked to search the building. Mayor Siegel agreed to the search, since he believed Prager had been taken away. In a second search of the building, two members of the mob located Prager and took him back to the remnants of the mob which had relocated back to Main Street.

Lynching

From that point Prager was marched west on Main Street and the St. Louis Road, all the while being beaten and otherwise harassed. He was also made to sing patriotic songs and to kiss the flag. When the mob arrived at the top of Bluff Hill, on the St. Louis Road overlooking St. Louis, a car was sent to retrieve tar from a nearby streetcar stop, with the intention of tar and feathering Prager. But the car returned unable to locate any tar. Joe Reigel, 28, had been one of the two men to remove Prager from city hall and had taken a leading role in the mob since that time. He went to a car and found a length of manila rope and announced that Prager should hang. Others were initially reluctant to join in, but no one in the mob would come forward to stop the lynching either.^[2]

Before the lynching, he was allowed to write a last note to his parents in Dresden, Germany: "Dear Parents I must on this, the 4th day of April, 1918, die. Please pray for me, my dear parents." He was then hanged in front of a crowd of 100 to 200 people at about 12:30 am on April 5, 1918.^[5]

Investigation

The murder was first investigated by Madison County Coroner Roy Lowe. His Coroner's Jury interviewed dozens of witnesses and on April 11 charged five men with murder. They were: Joe Riegel, 28; Wesley Beaver, 26; Richard Dukes, 22; William Brockmeier, 41; and Enid Elmore, 21.

Riegel gave a remarkably candid confession of his significant roll in the incident to the Coroner's Jury. He gave much the same statement to a reporter from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. A Madison County, Illinois, Grand Jury also reviewed the case and on April 25 handed down murder indictments for the five men previously charged, and seven other men. They included: Charles Cranmer, 20; James DeMatties, 18; Frank Flannery, 19; Calvin Gilmore, 44; John Hallworth, 43; and Cecil Larremore, 17. The twelfth man to be indicted, George Davis, would never be further identified, or even located, for that matter.^[2]

The grand jury also indicted four Collinsville police officers for ommission of duty and nonfeasance.

Trial and reaction

The trial commenced on May 13, 1918, but it took two weeks and the interviewing of over 700 prospective jurors to choose the 12 men who would serve. The judge refused to let the defense try to demonstrate Prager's disloyalty, and the case for the defendants amounted to three principle claims: no one could say who did what, half the defendants claimed they had not even been there, and the rest claimed they had been bystanders, even Joe Riegel, who had previously confessed his part in the affair. In its concluding statements, the defense argued that Prager's lynching was justified by "unwritten law" which does not allow unpatriotic talk. After barely five says of statements and testimony, the case went to the jury on June 1, 1918. After deliberating just 10 minutes, the jury found the defendants innocent.^[2] One juryman reportedly shouted, "Well, I guess nobody can say we aren't loyal now".^[6] Charges against the policemen and George Davis, the defendant who was never located, were dropped.

A week after the trial, an editorial in the newspaper the Collinsville Herald by editor and publisher J.O. Monroe said that, "Outside a few persons who may still harbor Germanic inclinations, the whole city is glad that the eleven men indicted for the hanging of Robert P. Prager were acquitted." Monroe noted, "the community is well convinced that he was disloyal.... The city does not miss him. The lesson of his death has had a wholesome effect on the Germanists of Collinsville and the rest of the nation."^[4]

A New York Times editorial said, "The new unwritten law appears to be that any group of men may execute justice , or what they consider justice, in any case growing out of the war." The Chicago Daily Tribune wrote along the same lines: “The lynching of Prager was reprehensible enough in itself, but the effort to excuse it as an act of ‘popular justice’ is worse.” The St. Louis Star noted the irony of the verdict being delivered while American troops fought for democracy abroad: “We must save our own soul as a nation. We cannot let ourselves go in such a way as was done in the Prager outrage and hold up our heads as civilized people. We are battling for right and humanity and should exhibit those qualities ourselves or be open to the charge of hypocrisy. We cannot successfully battle the Hun if we are to become the Hun ourselves.”^[2]