In 1837 the villain in ALTON, a paid pro-slavery lobbyist, handed Elijah Parish Lovejoy, Editor of The Alton Observer, a devil's ultimatum: "Sacrifice your values. Give up your commitment to free speech. Abandon your newspaper and leave Alton. Or stay. . . and you'll be murdered." When Lovejoy refused to sacrifice his values, a frenzied mob of white men feigned respectability by dressing up in top hats and swallow tail coats to murder him. This murder in Illinois, Abraham Lincoln's home state, awakened the nation to the evil of slavery.

In the 1830s, slaves escaped from Missouri, a slave state, risking their lives to ford the Mississippi River to Alton, Illinois, a free state, where they thought they would be free. A Missouri slave owner paid off an Illinois lawyer to pressure local residents to return his escaped slaves, manipulate the media, contrive a business downturn in Alton, and blame economic recession on all those who wanted to abolish slavery.

ALTON, based on the biography of Elijah Parish Lovejoy by the author's father, reveals the deep roots of today's racism and speaks to US election rigging, media manipulation and police brutality today.