Springfield Race Riots 1908

Springfield, Illinois monument to the 1908 race riots.

From the Wall Street Journal, "The Tangled Racial Roots of the Illinois Capital: Lincoln's Home of Springfield, an Early Haven for African-Americans, Erupted in Riots That It Has Only Recently Revisited," by Douglas A. Blackmon, on 20 January 2009: SPRINGFIELD, Ill. -- In a modest home on a street a few miles from the spot where Barack Obama began his bid to become the first black U.S. president, 85-year-old Charles Werner keeps tucked away a cardboard box of relics from his grandfather's tenure as county sheriff here a hundred years ago.

Among the old photographs and worn shackles is the brass casing of a rifle shell, fashioned into a lapel pin and engraved with the sheriff's name, the date of Aug. 14, 1908, and the words "Springfield Race War."

It was on that day that Springfield erupted in racial violence. For two days, thousands of white residents of a city that had been a key stop on the Underground Railroad and the hometown of Abraham Lincoln rampaged through the streets.

Enflamed after the arrest of two black men -- one for the murder of a white man and another for the alleged rape of a white woman -- they looted and destroyed the black business district, burned dozens of black-owned homes and attacked nearly every black man they encountered. Two African-American men with no connection to the alleged crimes were lynched. Stunned that such an event could have occurred in Springfield, a group of early civil-rights leaders organized the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People the following year.

The election of the nation's first African-American president has stirred some influential intellectuals -- black and white -- to argue that Mr. Obama's inauguration marks the moment when blacks in the U.S. should begin abandoning past grievances for slavery, discrimination and racial violence. On the campaign trail, even Mr. Obama and his aides often avoided extended discussion of race. They made it clear he didn't wish to be perceived simply as the first black major party candidate for the White House.

"It is simply no longer the case that the essence of black American life is racial victimization and disenfranchisement, a curse and a condemnation, a destiny based on color," wrote Charles Johnson, a National Book Award-winning English professor at the University of Washington in Seattle.

But Springfield has done precisely the opposite and revisited its past. After decades of mostly silence about 1908, thousands of city residents over the past year have banded together to mark the centennial of the most painful event in town history.

"We have to acknowledge when wrongs have been committed and do what we can to right those wrongs," said Kathryn Harris, a librarian at Springfield's Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the allure of Lincoln's association and jobs in bustling coal mines and factories made Springfield a magnet for African-Americans fleeing deepening racial oppression across the Southern states. By 1900, Springfield had the highest percentage of black residents of any city in Illinois.

But the influx also stirred racial resentments among whites. On Aug. 14, 1908, after a white woman in Springfield claimed to have been raped by a black man, large crowds gathered outside the county jail, intent on lynching the man accused of the rape and another black prisoner charged with killing a local white man, according to historical accounts. The woman later admitted her allegation of rape was fabricated.

Without the crowd realizing what was happening, the sheriff -- Mr. Werner's grandfather, also named Charles Werner -- spirited the defendants to safety. After the mob learned the African-American prisoners were gone, thousands of whites swirled through the city for two days, looting and shooting within sight of the old state capitol building where Lincoln proclaimed 50 years earlier that "a house divided against itself cannot stand."

By the time 4,000 state militiamen re-established order, most of the black residential areas of the city were razed. More than 40 houses were burned. The African-American business district was gutted. A black barber was lynched when he tried to fight off attackers. Five white men had been killed in stampedes, unintentional shootings or militia gunfire.

The last person to die was an elderly black man named William Donnegan. He had once been a shoe maker and was reputed to have had a passing acquaintance with Abraham Lincoln. By 1908, he was one of the city's most prominent and prosperous African-Americans, with real-estate holdings, a large home and a white wife. On the second day of the attacks, a mob dragged him from his home, cut his throat and hung him from a tree.

Lincoln Family Home in Springfield, Illinois

The black community in Springfield struggled to recover. "Everyone was aware of it. But no one spoke of it," said Rudy Davenport, a longtime local NAACP leader. "It was sort of like...just silence."

According to many African-Americans, Springfield as late as the 1960s was still following racial practices similar to the South, including restrictions on where blacks could eat in restaurants, sit in theaters or use the city swimming pool. In the late 1980s, Mr. Davenport and others successfully sued to force greater representation of African-American voters in local elections. In recent years, black leaders pushed for more minority police officers and firemen. The city responded by adding special recruiters and changing its hiring process.

Abraham Lincoln's presidential library. Springfield, Illionis

As the 100th anniversary of the riot approached in 2007, many black residents began pushing for an event to mark the centennial. The mayor, Timothy J. Davlin, who is white, appointed a commission to coordinate a commemoration. "We all know our rich history here," Mr. Davlin said this month. "And it's not all pretty. But it's part of our history whether you like it or not."

Not everyone in Springfield was certain that was a good idea. Even some prominent black pastors had reservations about stirring up difficult memories, according to Rev. Wesley McNeese, pastor of New Mission Church of God.

Stories about the events in the local State Journal-Register attracted hostile commentary. One posting on the paper's Web site called the plans a "pathetic exercise in digging up the past." Another wrote that the commemoration "is just stirring up trouble and tension between groups of citizens. This happened 100 years ago!"

The backbone of the remembrance became a series of multiracial religious gatherings held at various churches each month. Dubbed "solemn assemblies," the services ended with prayer sessions at one of the riot sites.

A few minutes before the first assembly last spring, hardly any participants had arrived. Beverly Peters, one of the key organizers, worried that the plan might be a bust. At the last minute, several hundred Springfield residents showed up. As the year progressed, larger crowds appeared.

Illinois State Map

At the same time, other organizations began sponsoring additional events. Local Springfield College-Benedictine University hosted speeches and forums by historians and authors. The city renamed a stretch of streets through the riot area Reconciliation Way. On the anniversary of the start of the riot, a local civic club held a mock retrial of the man tried but acquitted of the murder in 1908.

When the final church service convened, Mayor Davlin surprised the crowd by issuing a formal apology to the African-American residents of the city for the 1908 riot. In early February, a $300,000 state-funded statue showing scenes of the riot will be unveiled.

Now that the commemoration is largely over, Springfield residents are debating what it accomplished. The answers aren't clear. Mayor Davlin says an honest accounting of the riot has helped ease the way for efforts to increase the number of black police officers and improve educational opportunities. He also says the commemorative markers and interest in the race riot helped set the stage for this year's bicentennial celebration of Lincoln's birth in 1809 -- and were good for tourism.

Mr. Davenport hopes the remembrance process will make it more likely that efforts to tackle issues facing African-Americans, such as lower pay, crime and academic performance in schools, will be viewed as problems facing the city -- not just African-Americans.

Charles Werner, the grandson of the sheriff, says he thinks the long discussion may finally put the riot to rest. "I think it's going to be dropped," he said. "Maybe it will come back up again in another 100 years." (source: Wall Street Journal, Douglas Blackmon)

Springfield Race Riots 1908

Cairo, Illinois: Self-destruction by Racism

Time Magazine: Monday, Feb. 18, 1952

Education: What's Natural in Cairo

For 75 years, Illinois has had a law against segregation in public schools, but the city of Cairo (rhymes with faro) has never paid much attention. Cairo (pop. 12,400) happens to sit well below the Mason-Dixon line at the point where the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers meet. To all intents and purposes, it is a Southern town, and its 4,000 Negroes and 8,000 whites live out their carefully segregated lives accordingly.

Gem Theater

Negroes do not go to the Gem Theater, where the first-run films are shown. They do not eat in the white restaurants, or use the public library; and while the whites swim in the WPA-built pool, the colored folks, as the townspeople say, must "drown in the river." The schools have been separate as long as anyone can remember. Says Mrs. John C. Fisher, owner of the Cairo Citizen: "We've just never thought that this wasn't natural."

Cairo is located at the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, and is the southernmost town in the state of Illinois.

Elementary Answer. By last week, Cairo's dream of the segregated life had been rudely shattered. For the first time in years, fiery crosses burned, and the magnolia-lined streets echoed with shots and explosions. The reason: two field workers from the midwest regional office of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People had moved into town to end segregation in the schools once & for all. They had persuaded dozens of Negro parents to apply to have their children transferred to schools used by the whites.

School Superintendent Leo C. Schultz saw no alternative but to send the applications through for "processing." Other citizens, however, had a more elementary answer. As darkness fell one night, a band of men planted a ten-foot cross on top of the Mississippi levee near a Negro housing project. They planted another on the Ohio levee, and still another on the outskirts of town.

The next night there was more hooliganism. One band of hoodlums appeared on the lawn of a two-family Negro house, planted another cross and set it ablaze. Then they moved on to the home of Negro Dentist James C. Wallace Jr. and blasted away at his house with a shotgun. The next night, a bullet zinged through a window of Dentist W. A. Fingal's house. About the same time, a dynamite bomb exploded in Negro Physician Urbane F. Bass's backyard. Another bomb was tossed in front of the tire shop belonging to Vice President Henry Dyson of the local chapter of the N.A.A.C.P.

The longest civil rights boycott occurred in Cairo, IL. The boycott lasted for 10 years.

Conspiracy? Police, who insisted they knew who might be guilty, succeeded in rounding up only four young men suspected of being involved. But their performance of duty did not stop there. Last week they arrested eight N.A.A.C.P. members, charged them with "conspiracy to do illegal acts" and with "forcing [children] by threats and inducements to enter school." They also arrested two Negro mothers who wanted their children transferred to white schools. This, said the police, was "unlawfully causing and permitting children to be placed in such a situation that their lives and health were endangered."

In the City of Cairo, Illinois, the public swimming pool (at 24th and Sycamore) was changed to a "private pool" to remain segregated. It finally closed in 1963 to avoid integration. Now the former "whites only" swimming pool is permanently filled with concrete and grown over with weeds. This was the city's response to court-ordered integration.

Apparently, things were almost back to "natural" again in Cairo. One by one, Negro parents had withdrawn their application for transfers. At week's end, only 13 frightened Negro children were in Cairo's six white schools.

• Find this article at:
• http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,822150,00.html

Salt Sex Slaves

Best known for 2005's critically acclaimed Greetings From Cairo, Illinois, Stace England emerged as an intriguing geographical yang to Sufjan Stevens yin. Live performances featured extensive multimedia, documentaries in the US and Europe and stellar press on both sides of the Atlantic. England and his new band, The Salt Kings, continue his storytelling mastery with another slice of unknown US history on Salt Sex Slaves, weaving tales of brutal salt production, kidnapped free blacks, ghosts, slave breeding and murder in a supposed Free State, the Land of Lincoln, into a volatile, provocative Exile On Main St.-ish stew.

On my first listening, the emotion and poignancy of these songs hit me hard. This is a story of one of the worst periods in American history, that of slavery, and so few happy endings come out of that period that one would have to look hard to find them. England doesn't bother because his point is not happy endings that came out of slavery, his point was that there were people in America and a time in America when atrocity was the norm, and ignorance was the justification for it. Not only that, but it was no secret. Even the government participated in it. England holds up the legend of the Salt King like Sam Shepard's buried child, a rotten corpse pulled from the ground to reveal true horrors of slavery, heart-rending of lovers torn apart by capture and enslavement, the heinous gloating of men who kidnap a beautiful young woman and return her to slavery, a dastardly pastime of the Salt King.

Even the song in which the Salt King gets his comeuppance, delivered by a slave who reaches the limits of his tolerance and chops off the slave owner's leg with an ax, is sad. The man knows that his life will be forfeit, leaving him lynched by nightfall, and he gives his life for the chance to maim the Salt King, driving his ax against muscle and bone. The lesson to be learned in this story is that there was no good side to slavery, there was never any way for anyone to come out of it unscathed, nor should they have. England gives not so much a history lesson as a lesson in man's inhumanity to man in a historical setting, but that relates directly to the present day. In the time of the Salt King, the inhumanity toward those of a different skin color was justified by the riches of the salt trade, a commodity that was taken from the ground and made rich men of the few who controlled the many. The parallels to our current drive to take oil from the ground at the cost of as many lives as necessary are made with style, melody, and fierceness by England, which adds to the very raw emotion of this record. Just as the slave drivers were and the oil men are, England's rock and roll cry for someone to feel shame is relentless. (Source: Amazon Review)