ALTON — Eugene Jones Baldwin came to pay his respects at the funeral of civil rights pioneer Josephine Beckwith in 2017. He had interviewed her two years prior on her 100th birthday when he learned a remarkable detail about her childhood — she used to baby-sit Miles Davis, also a native of this river town.
Baldwin, now 77, said a Black retired lawyer approached him at the service.
“You didn’t just come here by accident,†he recalls the lawyer saying. “God sent you to write the history of the civil rights struggles in this area.â€
Eugene Jones Baldwin, of Alton, stands by the boat ramp giving access to the Mississippi River and Piasa Creek. This is a spot where enslaved people from Missouri crossed into Illinois.
Baldwin, a white man, responded that he was the wrong color to take on such a weighty project.
“There’s no color in justice,†the man replied.
That chance conversation sparked a years-long mission spent digging through archives and records, befriending a local expert, interviewing dozens of people and following the path of a winding creek to make a startling discovery.
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Baldwin returned to his hometown a decade ago after spending 30 years in Chicago as a playwright, musician and educator. He had no training as a historian and had never published nonfiction. But he has a knack for talking to people, drawing out their stories and a flair for retelling them.
One of his key mentors guiding his journey has been Charlotte Johnson, a Black amateur historian whose husband’s family roots in the Alton area trace back to 1845. A retired educator, she was awarded a lifetime achievement award from the Illinois State Historical Society for the decades of work she has done documenting the history of African Americans in the region.
Charlotte E. Johnson was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2021 by the Illinois State Historical Society for her contributions to the field.
Baldwin also met Johnson at Beckwith’s funeral and confided about the charge that had been issued to him. Johnson was impressed when he shared his work on the Tuskegee Airmen.
“So, are you going to do it?†she asked. He was unsure. Baldwin had a personal connection to the stories of the Underground Railroad. His great, great grandfather, William Holman Jones, had worked on the Underground Railroad in Michigan. Jones later moved to Kansas and befriended John Brown, a radical abolitionist and the first American executed for committing treason for inciting a slave rebellion.
Baldwin had also written a play about the Underground Railroad in the early 2000s and walked the first 10 miles of it as part of his research.
The idea of formally recording this history tugged at him. He mentioned to a friend later that evening that he would need an advance to commit to the work. The next day, his friend showed up at his house with a check.
“Now I’m forced to do it,†Baldwin thought.
A building from the 1904 World's Fair (foreground) and an apartment building (left) that was once a stop on the Underground Railroad in Alton, Illinois.Â
Changing the narrative
Larry McClellan is a founding professor at Governors State University and author of “Onward to Chicago: Freedom Seekers and the Underground Railroad in Northeastern Illinois.†McClellan says momentum has been building statewide to research the extensive Underground Railroad sites and decide how to commemorate this history.
Last year, McClellan served on a one-year task force on the Underground Railroad, which recommended creating an Illinois Freedom Trails Commission to support documentation, preservation and public awareness of the journeys of freedom seekers. That includes the sites and landmarks that were part of the Underground Railroad network. Legislation creating this commission has passed both chambers of the state’s General Assembly.
“Things are really bubbling all over in Illinois,†McClellan says. There are 429 locations that have been identified as potential Underground Railroad sites, which will require research to determine authenticity. He suspects the number will narrow down to 200 to 250 confirmed places.
But the real work, he says, isn’t just about mapping sites — it’s reframing the story.
“The Underground Railroad is traditionally seen as a system set up and operated by white abolitionists,†he says. “That’s not accurate. The energy of the Underground Railroad came from the journey of the freedom seekers.†People moved in response to the journeys of the enslaved people, and those responders included Black families. They all started to connect with each other, creating the network of the Underground Railroad, he explains. Research suggests that anywhere from 4,500 to 7,000 freedom seekers came through Illinois, with the largest number coming from Missouri.
The Piasa Creek area is connected to the legend of the Piasa Bird, a mythical creature depicted in Native American cave painting. It is believed to be the route taken by dozens of enslaved people fleeing Missouri.
Rocky Fork in Godfrey, right outside Alton is well known as a key location on the Underground Railroad. As early as 1816, the community and its church were a sanctuary for freedom seekers escaping slavery in Missouri. Enslaved people would cross the Mississippi River, follow the Piasa and Rocky Fork creeks, and seek refuge in the area.
Baldwin followed this journey, and it led him to a little-known cemetery with a noteworthy history.
The Arbuckle family fled from Missouri and settled near Piasa, Illinois, for generations.
Diving into the research
Baldwin learned that a Missouri slave owner named Arbuckle had fathered several children from those he enslaved. They were freed after his death in 1843. Dozens got on raft-like boats onto the Mississippi River. The people they encountered in Alton denied them landing. They continued north on the river to Piasa Creek. They left their boats and started hiking. Baldwin estimates they may have walked 20 or so miles.
The group encountered the Wilson family, English descendants, who helped them establish cabins nearby. Charlie Wilson, 80, who still lives on the family farm, said his great-great-grandfather was among those who aided the Arbuckles. They lived about a mile south of the Wilsons and farmed their own land.
“They were real well thought of,†Wilson says. None of the descendants has stayed on the property. The families worked together, Wilson recalls. There were few such integrated communities living side-by-side in America decades prior to the Civil War, Baldwin says.
Some of the graves at Arbuckle Cemetery are marked by stones.
Just outside the small town of Piasa, Wilson showed him a small, hidden cemetery, surrounded by cedar trees and with only a few headstones visible. He believes there are about 70 formerly enslaved people buried there, including veterans who fought in the Civil War. While locals and experts like Johnson have long known about the , it was new to Baldwin. He wants to see it restored.
“We want to protect it,†Baldwin says. He wants the state to put a monument on the site and preserve the remaining gravestones. One of his former classmates from Alton High School class of ‘66, Harold Gates, remembers attending segregated elementary schools in Alton even after the Supreme Court’s Brown versus Board of Education decision.
Gates says he appreciates that Baldwin has made the effort to interview so many people who have lived through the civil rights struggles in the region.
“He’s getting our versions and pulling that together for future people to see and read about,†Gates says. He’s glad it will include stories of the Wilsons and Arbuckles.
“We’ve always had allies,†he says. “It’s not talked about in history because folks in power don’t necessarily want us to know that.†He says the suppression of history is designed to keep people divided and attempt to erase the brutality and terrorism committed by some white Americans against Black Americans for hundreds of years.
The Arbuckle Cemetery is surrounded by tall cedar trees and has also been known as Cedar Cemetery.
Baldwin feels he is in a race against time to get his book completed. He has endured multiple cancers and a broken neck that may soon require surgery. He plans to self publish his manuscript, “There Is No Color in Justice,†within the next month.
The book traces stories of Alton’s civil rights legacy that he fears might be forgotten or buried — from its segregated schools to the bravery of Josephine Beckwith and the heroism of Black soldiers like James Killion Sr., who guarded German POWs on D-Day.
It also delves into ugly truths. Baldwin documents accounts of racist comments he encounters in everyday Alton, from lunch counters to oil change stations.
Eugene Baldwin holds the photo of his ancestor who worked on the Underground Railroad in Michigan.
“There are people who would sit and openly tell me of their contempt for Black people,†he says. “The n-word, I heard it over and over again, said with calmness.†At times, he’s angered some of the people he’s chatted up. One time, a couple of men chased him out of a store when he pulled out his cell phone to take their photos.
“There have been some very close moments,†he says. And even though he’s an elderly white man, he’s also heard slurs lobbed at him.
“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been called the n-word,†he says.
Baldwin knows he’s also shared some parts of the town’s history with residents who have never heard it. He’s even been asked who Elijah Lovejoy is. Lovejoy, an abolitionist newspaper publisher was murdered in Alton by a pro-slavery mob on Nov. 7, 1837.
There’s a monument dedicated to him at the entrance of the Alton City Cemetery.
If Baldwin has his way, another cemetery — one far more obscure and secluded — will also become recognized as holding a key chapter of the region’s history.
