Editing Spring Valley, Illinois (section)

===Violent strikes===
There were large-scale violent strikes in the late 1880s.<ref>Henry Demarest Lloyd, ''A Strike of Millionaires Against Miners: Or, The Story of Spring Valley. An Open Letter to the Millionaires'' (1890)</ref>  Italian coal miners in the 1890s brought in anarchism, and the violence escalated during the [[Panic of 1893|depression of 1893-96]]. The strikes were failures but the angry miners voted for the Populist ticket in 1894.<ref>Gianna S. Panofsky, "A View of Two Major Centers of Italian Anarchism in the United States: Spring Valley and Chicago, Illinois." in ''Italian Ethnics: Their Languages, Literature, and Lives'' (1987)</ref>

In August 1895, Spring Valley experienced the state's most destructive race riot to date, out of which came major legislation prohibiting companies from bringing in squads of men to replace existing workers. Tension between mine owners and union agitators led to a lockout in 1889. Many Italian immigrants arrived to cross the picket lines but eventually staged their own strike in 1894, encouraging the industry to bring in African Americans to break the strike. Relations between the races rapidly deteriorated, leading to the riot that ended the use of Black strike breakers. Governor [[John Peter Altgeld]]'s response to the August 4 attack on the black community by displaced Italian miners ultimately revealed his support of fellow immigrants over African Americans.<ref>Felix L. Armfield, "Fire on the Prairies: The 1895 Spring Valley Race Riot", ''Journal of Illinois History'' 2000 3(3): 185-200</ref>  Another riot erupted in 1895 when recent Polish, Lithuanian, Italian, and Belgian immigrants raided, burned, and looted the Black section of town, leaving fourteen Black townspeople injured.<ref>Caroline A. Waldron,  "'Lynch-Law Must Go!' Race, Citizenship, and the Other in an American Coal Mining Town", ''Journal of American Ethnic History'' (2000) 20(1) p. 60 [https://www.jstor.org/stable/27502644 in JSTOR]</ref> Black victims of the riot took their attackers to court and used their status as citizens to win the case against the new immigrants.<ref>Caroline A. Waldron,  "'Lynch-Law Must Go!' Race, Citizenship, and the Other in an American Coal Mining Town", ''Journal of American Ethnic History'' (2000) 20(1) pp: 50-77 [https://www.jstor.org/stable/27502644 in JSTOR]</ref>

Spring Valley remained a brawling, boisterous place until the competition from cheaper Southern Illinois coal fields forced the mine to close in late 1927.