Prairieland - Small Towns 2006 -2010
Commerical Avenue, Historic Downtown Cairo, IL 2009.
This block is the site of the 1909 lynching of Willie James, a black man accused of raping and killing a young white woman. His rope broke during the hanging, so the angry mob riddled his body with bullets, dragged him a mile to the scene of the crime, then set his body on fire. All of this took place in front of 10,000 cheering spectators, of whom many who participated in this horiffic event were women.
Commercial Ave. now sits vacant, the victim of a civil rights boycot that lasted three years during the early 70's as blacks refused to shop in the stores where shop owners wouldn't hire them, driving the white business owners out of business. The city never recovered economically after that event. In its heyday during the 1920's Cairo's population peaked around 15,000. Recent census figures claimed only 2,800 in 2010.
