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Elijah P. Lovejoy Monument

Alton Cemetery at Monument Ave., Alton, IL 62002

Historic Sites

Visit the monument of an amazingly persistent and inspirational freedom fighter, Elijah P. Lovejoy.

This monument memorializes Elijah P. Lovejoy, whose work and death in Alton gave him a place in history for the abolition of slavery. During the slavery era, Elijah Lovejoy was a pastor who wrote anti-slavery editorials so controversial he became an object of hatred by slaveholders. Despite threats to his life, he continued his anti-slavery writings in the Alton Observer, even after three of his printing presses were thrown into the Mississippi River. It was this persistence that led an angry pro-slavery mob to attack and kill him in 1837.

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