Alton Unitarian Minister John Gill Wrote First Biography of Elijah Lovejoy

by

John J. Dunphy

(Originally published in the 8/28/13 edition of The Telegraph of Alton, IL)

Elijah Lovejoy was commemorated by a monument in Alton’s City Cemetery in 1897, but another 61 years passed before the first full-length biography of the slain abolitionist minister appeared. Ironically, its author was a former Alton minister who, like Lovejoy, also suffered persecution for his commitment to human rights.

Born in Louisville, Ken., in 1909, John Gill earned degrees at the University of Wisconsin and Union Theological Seminary before coming to Alton in 1944 to serve as minister at First Unitarian Church. Like many other Illinois communities at that time, Alton openly flouted state law by maintaining segregated public schools below the high school level. African-Americans who wanted to watch a movie at the old Grand Theater were relegated to seats in the balcony. Downtown stores refused to allow blacks to try on clothes before purchasing them. Black families couldn’t dine at the lunch counter of Kresge’s Variety Store.

This state of affairs was unacceptable to Gill. He initiated discussion groups in an attempt to better race relations. In 1946, Gill delivered the main address at the 18th annual Lincoln-Douglas Dinner at the old Booker T. Washington Center.

Gill realized that Alton’s ministers could play a critical role in transforming the community. He joined the Alton Council of Churches, which sponsored an annual training institute at Shurtleff College for religious leaders. Gill served as dean of this institute in 1947. That same year, he earned a Ph.D. from Harvard. Gill had become interested in Elijah Lovejoy while living here and wrote a doctoral dissertation titled “The Issues Involved in the Death of the Rev. Elijah P. Lovejoy, Alton, 1837.”

Alton’s civil rights activists mounted a major challenge to our community’s segregated schools in 1950 by attempting to enroll 175 African-American children at five all-white grade schools and two all-white junior high schools. Gill organized some fellow ministers to help supervise the demonstration and protect the children. Local racists were enraged and burned crosses at Salu Park and Riverfront Park. Gill refused to be intimidated and castigated segregation from his pulpit. He was also one of 18 ministers who signed a statement published in The Telegraph that condemned racism.

The congregation of First Unitarian Church regarded Gill as too controversial and voted 46 to 25 not to renew his contract as minister. Alton’s desegregation struggle and Gill’s dismissal were even the topic of an article published in the Jan. 22, 1951 issue of Time magazine.

Gill served as minister at a Unitarian church in Tacoma, Wash., after leaving Alton and later taught at Fort Lewis College and Central Michigan University. His book Tide Without Turning: Elijah Lovejoy and Freedom of the Press was published by Starr King Press in 1958. Gill had expanded his doctoral dissertation into a highly-readable biography that won accolades from scholars as well as the general public. Its preface, which describes the courses of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers as they meander to the River Bend, is beautifully lyrical and reads almost like poetry.

Gill died in 1979. Lovejoy scholar Rev. Robert Tabscott organized a service of recognition for Gill, which was held on Feb. 20, 1995 at First Unitarian Church of Alton. Guests included Gill’s widow, Evalyn Gill of Greensboro, N.C., and Gill’s daughter, Mary Louise Gill of Pittsburgh, Penn. The service, at which this columnist presided, did much to right the injustice of Gill’s dismissal so many years ago.

Merton Dillon and Paul Simon wrote Lovejoy biographies in the 1960s, but Gill’s Tide Without Turning: Elijah Lovejoy and Freedom of the Press remains the definitive work on the martyred newspaper editor. Only Gill who, like Lovejoy, had also endured persecution while fighting for dignity and freedom in the River Bend could have written such a book.

John J. Dunphy is the author of Abolitionism and the Civil War in Southwestern Illinois and Unsung Heroes of the Dachau Trials.