1908 Race Riot Memorial, Springfield
This cast bronze sculpture by Preston Jackson was erected in 2009 to commemorate the 1908 Springfield Race Riot. The Springfield riot was considered particularly shocking because it occurred in Abraham Lincoln's hometown, but Springfield in 1908 was very different from the town Lincoln left in 1861. The state capital had become a thriving industrial community, which attracted many African Americans seeking work and better lives. Springfield's white citizens saw the encroachment of blacks as a threat to their traditional social, political and economic power. As was true elsewhere in the state and the nation, racial tensions ran high.
In July 1908, Joe James, a black man, was arrested for the murder of Clergy Ballard, a white mining engineer. Whites were outraged by the crime, and newspaper accounts of Ballard's murder and James' arrest filled the papers. Then, on August 13, Mabel Hallam, a white woman, accused George Richardson, an African American, of rape. Violence erupted on Friday, August 14, 1908, when a crowd formed outside the county jail, where the two men were held. To distract the growing mob, Sheriff Charles Werner called in a false fire alarm. During the commotion, James and Richardson were smuggled out of the city. News that the prisoners had been moved led to rioting. Black businesses were destroyed and homes burned.
The mob reached Scott Burton's residence on Friday. Though many blacks had fled the city during the rioting, Burton, an African American barber, stayed behind to defend his home and business. Burton fired into the crowd from his porch, and rioters stormed the house, beat Burton and dragged him from the home. Using a clothesline stolen from a nearby yard, they lynched Burton from a tree. He was then beaten, stabbed, shot, burned and his body desecrated.
Governor Charles S. Deneen watched the violence unfold from the safety of the Executive Mansion. As the chaos escalated, he called in the state militia to restore order. Some 4,000 troops camped on the lawn of the Illinois State Capitol and began moving through the city attempting to restore order.
Rioters next turned their attention to the Illinois State Arsenal, where African American residents had sought refuge. Turned away by the militia, the mob moved on to a predominantly white, middle-class neighborhood near the Capitol. They descended upon the home of William Donnegan, a prosperous black businessman who had been an acquaintance of Abraham Lincoln. Financially successful and married to a white woman, Donnegan — though 84 years old and sickly — symbolized the threat whites felt from African Americans in their community. Donnegan was dragged from his home, his throat was slit, and he was lynched. State militia arrived shortly thereafter to find Donnegan barely alive. He died the next day at St. John's Hospital.
The riot led to seven documented deaths in the city and destroyed dozens of homes and businesses. In the aftermath, newspapers throughout the state and nation called for justice. A total of 107 people were indicted for riot, arson, larceny and murder, but only one was convicted — of petty larceny. George Richardson, originally accused of rape, was released when Mabel Hallam admitted that she had lied. Joe James was convicted of the murder of Clergy Ballard and executed on October 23, 1908.
The riot in Springfield mobilized social activists. Appalled at the violence, a group of white reformers called for a meeting to discuss racial discrimination and demanded racial justice. Joined by seven African Americans, including Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Mary Church Terrell and W.E.B. DuBois, the group formed the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1909, the centennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth. Their goal was to secure the rights guaranteed in the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution and to ensure political, educational, social and economic equality of African Americans in the United States.
Despite the national outcry denouncing the violence in Mr. Lincoln's hometown, racial violence flared again in East St. Louis in 1917 and Chicago in 1919 as blacks and whites grappled with racial tensions, fear and bigotry.
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1908 Race Riot Memorial
Union Square Park
Sixth and Jefferson Streets
Springfield, Il 62701
A 1908 Race Riot Walking Tour is available at https://www.visitspringfieldillinois.com/LocationDetails/?id=1908-Race-Riot-Walking-Tour
Ida B. Wells-Barnett House, Chicago
Journalist, writer and anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells-Barnett lived in this 19th-century Romanesque Revival style stone residence. She and her husband bought the home in 1919 and lived there until 1929. Now a National Historic Landmark, the home is a private residence.
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Closed to the public
Illinois Capitol, Springfield
The Illinois Capitol, the seat of government for the state of Illinois, is the state's sixth statehouse. Ground was broken on March 11, 1869; the structure was completed twenty years later at a total cost of $4,500,000. Though the building was not yet complete, the General Assembly moved into the Statehouse in 1876.
Also in 1876, Chicago's Second Legislative District elected John W.E. Thomas to become the first African American to serve in the Illinois legislature. Thomas sponsored the Illinois Civil Rights Act of 1885, which prohibited discrimination against blacks in public places. The first black appointed to a major state job, E.H. Wright, went to work in the office of the secretary of state, then housed in the Capitol, where he served as a bookkeeper and clerk.
In 1905, legislators passed a bill imposing a fine of $1,000 on anyone convicted of participating in a lynch mob and making it unlawful for a group of five or more people to gather with the intent to do harm. The law also outlined the responsibility of law enforcement in protecting those in their custody against mob action and taking action to prevent mob violence. Unfortunately, the law did little to end lynching or riots in Illinois. During the Springfield Race Riot of 1908, 4,000 National Guard soldiers, called in by the governor to quell the violence, camped on the grounds of the Statehouse.
In 1924, Adelbert H. Roberts of Chicago, who served three terms in the Illinois House of Representatives, became the first black elected to the Illinois State Senate. Today, a commemorative statue stands in the Capitol rotunda in his honor. As the twentieth century progressed, legislation continued to be proposed and passed in the chambers of the state capitol, gradually eroding discrimination and expanding civil rights to Illinois' black citizen.
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Illinois State Capitol
401 S. Second St
Springfield, IL 62706
(217) 782-2000
