East Saint Louis, IL news and local guide

Captain James Piggott, a Revolutionary War veteran, founded the settlement in 1797, when he began running a ferry across the river between the village, called Illinoistown, and St. Louis. After he died in 1799 his widow sold the ferry. A great-great-granddaughter of the Piggotts was the actress Virginia Mayo. On April 1, 1861, Illinoistown residents voted 183 to rename the town East St. Louis, and it grew into a sizable city alongside St. Louis, then one of the largest cities in the country. During the railroad strike of 1877, workers took over the city's Relay Depot as a command center until federal troops took it back on July 28. The Great Cyclone of 1896 destroyed 311 buildings and badly damaged 7,200 more, including the rail yards. By 1917 the city's war-boosted industries were dominated by European immigrant workers, who repeatedly tried to organize. When 2,500 white workers struck the meatpacking plants of nearby National City in 1916, the companies brought in Black workers, some from the South, and kept some after the strike while firing white workers. With the Black population nearly doubling between 1910 and 1917 in the Great Migration, the competition fed racial tensions that erupted in the East St. Louis riots of 1917. Sources Wikipedia: East St. Louis, Illinois