In the 1900s, the coalfields of Williamson County — the ancestral homeland of the Kaskaskia, Peoria, and Shawnee peoples — are some of the richest in Illinois.

On this day in 1922, the United Mine Workers are eight weeks into a nationwide strike and a local mine owner breaks his agreement with the union and hires replacement workers from Chicago — many unaware they are crossing picket lines.

Gunfire breaks out. Three union miners are killed. The next morning, more than 50 strikebreakers surrender and are promised safe passage out. Instead, 23 are shot, stabbed, and hunted in the woods. Some bodies are put on display.

214 indictments are issued. Sympathetic local juries acquit some and others are dropped. No one is ever punished. The dead are buried in unmarked graves for 93 years.