John James Audubon with Brian 'Fox' Ellis
(Aired: May 28, 2014 on WSIU 91.9FM, WUSI 90.3FM, & WVSI 88.9FM)
To learn about John James Audubon’s life and career, see this biographical sketch from the Audubon society or this one from PBS’s American Masters series.
Birds of America, probably Audubon’s most famous work, is available here.
The State Journal-Register in Springfield produced this short video about Brian “Fox” Ellis’s commemoration of the 200th anniversary of Audubon’s journey across Illinois.
This Illinois Humanities presentation in which Brian “Fox” Ellis portrays Audubon was broadcast by WBEZ FM in Chicago in 2007.
The actual episode in Audubon’s life on which “The Dream He Never Knew the End Of,” the narrative core of Robert Penn Warren’s 1969 long poem Audubon: A Vision, is based occurred during his trek through southern Illinois. To read it, click here and scroll down to page 255.
Audubon maintained a business partnership with Ferdinand Rozier that included a mercantile business in Ste. Genevieve, Missouri. Members of the Rozier family still operate stores in and near Ste. Genevieve, including one across the Mississippi in Chester, Illinois.
Civil War Letters from Liberty with Judy Simpson and Aaron Lisec
(Aired: May 21, 2014 on WSIU 91.9FM, WUSI 90.3FM, & WVSI 88.9FM)
The “Civil War Letters from Liberty” program is an outgrowth of an exhibition at SIU Carbondale’s Morris Library, Civil War 150. Accompanying Civil War 150 was a companion exhibit of Civil War letters from Morris Library’s Special Collections, many of which have been digitized and can be viewed online.
The letters of Nancy Clendenin Mann, from which the content of this program was selected, are part of the John Preston Mann Family papers, which contain various materials pertaining to nineteenth-century life in and around the small community of Liberty (now known as Rockwood) in southern Randolph County. Liberty (Rockwood) was home to both Confederate sympathizers and conductors on the Underground Railroad, as this article notes, illustrating the range of sentiment within the region during the Civil War era. This website provides some information about the history of Nancy Clendenin Mann’s family, who were among the early white settlers of southern Randolph County.
Another institution that conserves and presents the Civil War-era history of southern Illinois is the General John A. Logan Museum in Murphysboro. Its director, P. Michael Jones, presented the very first episode of Southern Illinois Wonders.
Literary Paranoia with Laura Benedict
(Aired: May 14, 2014 on WSIU 91.9FM, WUSI 90.3FM, & WVSI 88.9FM)
Author Laura Benedict specializes in dark suspense. Her novels include the following:
Bliss House
Devil’s Oven
Isabella Moon
She is co-editor of the following anthologies:
Surreal South: An Anthology of Short Fiction
Feeding Kate: A Crime Fiction Anthology (benefiting the Lupus Foundation of America)
Profiles of Laura Benedict and her work have appeared in the Southern Illinoisan in 2007 and 2009 and on the following blogs: January Magazine, Eden Thrillers, Backstory, A Forest of Stories with Sara Blackthorne, and Anthony Neil Smith’s blog.
Laura Benedict’s own blog is entitled Notes from the Handbasket.
Laura Benedict’s husband, Pinckney Benedict, is also an acclaimed author, as well as a professor in the SIU Carbondale creative writing program. A list of his publications is available here.
The Southern Baptist Division of 1993 with Ryan Burge
(Aired: May 7, 2014 on WSIU 91.9FM, WUSI 90.3FM, & WVSI 88.9FM)
Numerous books and articles examine the late-20th-century controversy within the Southern Baptist Convention that Ryan Burge discusses in this edition of Southern Illinois Wonders. Some reflect particular positions on the issues involved in the debate, while others seek to maintain a neutral stance. Some of the authors were participants in the conflict on one side or the other and write from the perspective of first-hand experience, but others are scholars of American culture and religious life who had no personal stake in the controversy.
Two books that address in some depth the intellectual, social, and historical contexts surrounding the dispute are Uneasy in Babylon: Southern Baptist Conservatives in American Culture by Barry Hankins and Baptist Battles: Social Change and Religious Conflict in the Southern Baptist Convention by Nancy Tatom Ammerman.
For first-hand recollections by Southern Baptist leaders, thinkers, and educators who identified with the moderate wing of the denomination during the conflict, see Exiled: Voices of the Southern Baptist Convention Holy War, edited by Carl Kell. For a detailed analysis more sympathetic to the conservative wing, see the six-volume The Truth in Crisis series by James C. Hefley.
This article offers a positive assessment of R. Albert Mohler’s ongoing presidency of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary as of its 20-year mark. This opinion piece offers a contrasting view.
Another church body with substantial representation in southern Illinois is the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. A division that occurred within its Concordia Seminary in St. Louis in 1973, resulting in the establishment of Christ Seminary-Seminex, was similar to the one that would occur at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville 20 years later. It, likewise, affected church members in southern Illinois. Many books and articles have been written about that controversy by various authors – some representing one side of the conflict or the other, some neutral. One of the most recent and most comprehensive is Power, Politics, and the Missouri Synod: A Conflict that Changed American Christianity by James Burkee. A listing of additional books and other resources on this topic is available here. Interestingly, religious historian Bill Leonard, who identified with the moderate wing of the Southern Baptist Convention, wrote this review of the memoirs of John Tietjen, founding president of Christ Seminary-Seminex, in 1990, two years before leaving the faculty of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
Gary DeNeal Poetry with Hugh DeNeal
(Aired: April 30, 2014 on WSIU 91.9FM, WUSI 90.3FM, & WVSI 88.9FM)
Here are the three poems by Gary DeNeal that Hugh DeNeal reads and discusses in this Southern Illinois Wonders program.
Gary DeNeal published Springhouse Magazine for many years before handing the reins to his son, Brian DeNeal. Gary also publishes In Womble’s Blue Shadow and is the author of A Knight of Another Sort: Prohibition Days and Charlie Birger and the co-author, with Brocton Lockwood, of Shades of Gray.
Hugh DeNeal, Gary’s son, is a songwriter and founding member of The Woodbox Gang.
Moonshining: Open for Business with Karen Binder
(Aired: April 23, 2014 on WSIU 91.9FM, WUSI 90.3FM, & WVSI 88.9FM)
As Karen Binder notes in this edition of Southern Illinois Wonders, George Washington, first President of the United States, owned a distillery.
Karen mentions Whoopie Cat Mountain, located in the Shawnee Hills of Hardin County, as a site of moonshine making in years past. Today, it’s a U.S. Forest Service Research Natural Area noted for its distinctive plant populations. It’s also the namesake of this song by country musician Rhonda Belford from nearby Rosiclare.
Southern Illinois’s Prohibition-era bootlegging gangs resembled rural moonshine runners in some ways and urban organized crime syndicates in others. One such outfit is profiled in Inside the Shelton Gang by Ruthie Shelton and Jon Musgrave. Another is the subject of A Knight of Another Sort: Prohibition Days and Charlie Birger by Gary DeNeal, whose poetry is featured in the next installment of Southern Illinois Wonders. (See above.) The Birger Gang’s story also inspired this album by the Woodbox Gang featuring Hugh DeNeal, Gary’s son, who will reads and discusses Gary’s poetry in that episode.
In recent years, Southern Illinois’s stature as a wine-making region has increased, illustrated by the Shawnee Hills Wine Trail.
Karen’s own work as a distiller is profiled here and here.
Though southern Illinois’s neighbors to the south, Kentucky and Tennessee, may be more closely associated with whiskey production today, its neighbor to the north, Peoria, Illinois, was once “The Whiskey Capital of the World,” as Illinois Humanities Road Scholars Speakers Bureau presenter Brian “Fox” Ellis explains in this article.
My Catholic Community with Father Joseph Brown
(Aired: April 16, 2014 on WSIU 91.9FM, WUSI 90.3FM, & WVSI 88.9FM)
The two Catholic parishes mentioned in this edition of Southern Illinois Wonders are St. Augustine in East St. Louis and St. Mary in Mound City, which, unfortunately, is now closed. (Note: In his remarks, Father Brown identifies the latter parish as “St. Joseph,” but it was actually called “St. Mary.”)
To learn more about the history and culture of East St. Louis, visit this website created by students from McKendree University and East St. Louis Senior High School and hosted by the Institute for Urban Research at SIU Edwardsville. Also, see the recent documentary film Against All the Odds.
To learn more about the history and culture of Mound City, view this photographic tour with commentary. Also, see this website about Mound City National Cemetery.
Additional insight about African American Catholic identity is available from the Institute for Black Catholic Studies at Xavier University of Louisiana, where Father Brown once taught, and Father Brown’s own books, To Stand on the Rock: Meditations on Black Catholic Identity (Orbis Press, 1998) and Sweet, Sweet Spirit: Prayer Services from the Black Catholic Church (St. Anthony Messenger Press, 2006).
Metropolis - Steamboat Central? with Bob Swenson
(Aired: April 9, 2014 on WSIU 91.9FM, WUSI 90.3FM, & WVSI 88.9FM)
To learn more about Bob Swenson’s research on Ohio River steamboats, read this article and this article, both from the Southern Illinoisan.
Perhaps the most comprehensive online source of information about any and all aspects of steamboats, past and present, is Steamboats.org.
Interested in venturing from virtual reality to real reality? You can experience much of the subject matter of this episode of Southern Illinois Wonders in person at the Mississippi River Museum and Interpretive Center in Grand Tower and the Massac County Historical Society in Metropolis.
Many of the sketches of esteemed southern Illinois artist Roscoe Misselhorn depict steamboats. You can see examples here. (Scroll to the bottom of the page.) Better still, visit the Misselhorn Art Gallery in Sparta, housed in the historic GM&O depot that appears prominently in the movie In the Heat of the Night (1967).
The Farmers' Movement of 1873 with Jane Adams
(Aired: April 2, 2014 on WSIU 91.9FM, WUSI 90.3FM, & WVSI 88.9FM)
To learn more about the Farmers Movement of 1873, look at “The Grange Movement Explodes” and “Resolutions of a Meeting of the Illinois State Farmers Association, April 1873.”
To learn more about the Grange (the National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry), an outgrowth of the Farmers Movement of 1873, see the Illinois State Grange website and listen to this National Public Radio feature about current issues of identity within the Grange.
To learn more about late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century agrarian populism, to which the Farmers Movement of 1873 contributed, see The Populist Moment by Lawrence Goodwyn (Oxford, 1978), American Populism by Robert McMath (Macmillan, 1993), and The Populist Persuasion by Michael Kazin (Cornell, 1998).
To learn more about books by Jane Adams, click here, here, and here.
A Team Apart with Judy Travelstead
(Aired: March 26, 2014 on WSIU 91.9FM, WUSI 90.3FM, & WVSI 88.9FM)
To learn more about the Southern Illinois Conference of Colored High Schools and its basketball teams, read this chapter in Sweet Charlie, Dike, Cazzie, and Bobby Joe: High School Basketball in Illinois Taylor Bell (University of Illinois Press, 2004), and visit illinoishsglorydays.com (Scroll down to the “Southern Illinois Conference of Colored High Schools” heading.)
To learn more about what the Union County Historical and Genealogy Society did with the Hometown Teams Museum on Main Street exhibit (in partnership with the Smithsonian Institution and Illinois Humanities), have a look at our Extra Innings blog.
A related story is that of Mannie Jackson, one of the first two African Americans to join the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign basketball team and a member and owner of the Harlem Globetrotters. He played early in his career at Lincoln School in Edwardsville, which was once a member of the Southern Illinois Conference of Colored High Schools. Mr. Jackson is now collaborating with Lewis & Clark Community College and the National Endowment for the Humanities to transform Lincoln School in Edwardsville into a humanities center.
The Underground Railroad with Carol Pirtle
(Aired: March 19, 2014 on WSIU 91.9FM, WUSI 90.3FM, & WVSI 88.9FM)
To learn about the Underground Railroad in southwestern Illinois and the role of Covenanters in developing it, consult these sources:
Escape Betwixt Two Suns: A True Tale of the Underground Railroad by Carol Pirtle
“Andrew Borders v. William Hayes: Indentured Servitude and the Underground Railroad in Illinois” by Carol Pirtle, Illinois Historical Journal (Autumn 1996)
Illinois Digital Archives: The William Hayes Collection, 1820-1860.
Contextual information about the Covenanter tradition and its role in southwestern Illinois history is available from these sources:
The Scots and Their Descendants in Illinois by Thomas MacMilian (1919)
“Our History,” Westminster Presbyterian Church of Sparta by Carol Pirtle
The History of the Oakdale Reformed Presbyterian Church.
Egypt with Mike Jones
(Aired: March 12, 2014 on WSIU 91.9FM, WUSI 90.3FM, & WVSI 88.9FM)
Mike Jones’s commentary on Southern Illinois Wonders and this article by Jon Musgrave both interpret the origins of the use of “Egypt” as a name for southern Illinois in a largely positive, or at least value-neutral, light.
Some historians, however, believe that regardless of how the name originated, its use during much of the nineteenth century carried a largely negative connotation, implying that the region’s culture was tainted by racism and insularity. According to this view, it was only later that southern Illinoisans who wished to enhance their region’s reputation traced the etymology of the name and resurrected its more positive usage. Rhonda M. Kohl’s analysis in pages 1-3 of The Prairie Boys Go to War: The Fifth Illinois Cavalry, 1861-1865 (Southern Illinois University Press, 2013) seems to align with that interpretation.
In his epilogue to The United States of Appalachia, which notes historic linkages and cultural affinities between Appalachia and southern Illinois, Jeff Biggers strikes a balance between the positive and the negative usages of “Egypt.” He suggests that while the term has sometimes been used in a derogatory manner, the stereotypes that it has invoked may not be entirely fair and fail to do justice to the region’s complexity and positive attributes.