Elijah Lovejoy

[Rsmyth]

Elijah Parish Lovejoy died on November 7th 1837 and is buried in Alton Cemetery in Alton, Illinois. The stone in front of his grave marker reads…”whose death at the hands of an angry mob…made him an enduring symbol of the fight for human liberty and freedom of the press.”

Initially on November 9th 1837, Lovejoy was buried in an unmarked grave in the Alton City Cemetery. William “Scotch” Johnson, a Black man who assisted in the burial would be instrumental in locating the grave years later for reburial of the remains.

Decades had passed when his body was exhumed and re-interred in its present site in the Alton Cemetery, with the monument being dedicated on November 7th 1897, exactly sixty years after his murder.