Springfield, Illinois, August 14-15 1908 ― A truth about lynching is that it is a crime driven by the need to
commit the most extreme violence. The press of the Jim Crow era would often
dress it up as a need for community justice, or necessary reprisal for a
violent crime. Yet every lynching was extreme in its violence, especially in
the early 20th Century.
The so called “Race Riot” or
“Race War” in Springfield, Illinois on this night was a prime example of
bloodlust and the press trying to hide the worst of White violence toward
Blacks.
It began in the afternoon when
crowds of angry Whites began to gather in the city’s downtown near the jail.
They were demanding that a man named George Richardson, who was accused of
raping a White woman and Joe James accused of killing a White railroad engineer
be turned over to them. The sheriff had heard the rumors and angry complaints
for a few days and was preparing to move the two men out of the city.
For the period this preparation
was a bit of surprise, even more surprising is that hearing the news from
downtown Illinois Governor Charles Deneen called the sheriff to ask if he
wanted the National Guard deployed. At 5 pm the sheriff thought this was
probably unnecessary, later he was forced to rethink this. It was agreed though
the governor would activate a complement of the guard and put them at the
armory just outside the city.
As night began to fall the
sheriff set off a false fire alarm a few blocks from the jail while he put the
two prisoners into a car loaned to him by one of the city’s most prominent businessmen,
theater owner George Loper. They took the two men to the train station where
they sent them off to Bloomington at least until trial.
The transfer of the prisoners was
successful, so successful in fact it represented a complete dismissal of the
city’s White population. To the mob it meant that the Black man avoided their
justice and that would mean they thought they were as good as the White
citizens, it might mean other Blacks would too.
This was already a problem in
Springfield. The White population felt threatened by Tthe Black population
having their own hotels and boarding houses. Their own grocery and clothing stores.
Perhaps worst there was a Black owned newspaper.
This type of independence created
resentment in the White population that firmly believed all Blacks were to be subordinate.
There was never a consideration that at least two-thirds of the Black
population worked as laborers, porters, housemen and janitors. It was more
threatening that any Black person would attempt to own something and be
successful.
The two men escaping the mob was the
last insult these White people could take, and it lit an explosion of hatred
and rage. That discovered that Harry Loper had aided in the escape so they set
fire to his car and restaurant. The mob, which is reported to be between 1,000
and 2,000 active rioters with a few thousand more hangers on watching events,
moved south of downtown into the Black business district and they began
systematically burning and looting.
At this point there was some
Black resistance. Some Black shop owners and residents got to the 2nd
floor of their buildings and fired down on the mob with shotguns, and they
threw bricks. This didn’t last long as the mob broke into a pawn shop and took
all the guns and ammo they could.
For two blocks every business was burned and
nearly every Black person beaten before they were able to escape and run away.
Entire store fronts were ripped apart and glass shattered.
As night turned into morning the
mob moved into the Black residential area, the Badlands, and began running
people out of their homes and setting them on fire. As morning broke on the 15th
the Black section was in ruins. The mob had broken up some and were in
different sections. The governor had ordered the guard to break up the mob as
the sheriff was ineffectual.
The first contact between the
guard and mob was when the mob chased a couple of hundred Blacks into the arsenal.
The guard came out with bayonets and fired above the crowd. Some dispersed, the
rest when the guard rushed them, bayonets forward,
Early in the morning a segment of
the mob found a Black barber and decided to set an example of him. His name was
Scott Burton, and he owned his own shop, and his grandfather had been President
Lincoln’s barber. The crowd decided to target Burton and burst into his home at
2:30 am, beating him and drug him out. They chanted, “Let’s see this Niger
swing.” The mob had cut and mutilated Burton before hanging him and then setting
his body on fire. I truly despicable murder.
The mob also set their sights on William
K. H. Donigan, an eighty-four-year-old man shoemaker, who had built some
significant wealth through the years and had married a White woman and moved
into a White section of town. All these acts were considered terrible cultural attacks
by a Black man snubbing his nose at the natural order. The mob had kidnapped
him from his home, defenseless, due to age and rheumatism, they slit his throat
ear to ear and hung him. Yet somehow, he survived overnight and died at the
hospital a day later.
By the time of the Donigan
hanging the militia was finally on the march through the city restoring order. Fortunately
for the mob it was easy to fade from sight and go back to their regular lives. The
Blacks had no life to go back to. While there were calls for justice at every
level of government there wasn’t any appetite to actually fight for racial
justice. 89 men were arrested and sent before a grand jury, that failed to
advance charges.
The central Black district of the
city suffered #150,000 dollars in damages and losses, the equivalent of $5.7
million in 2025. Two men were lynched, another four Blacks killed and 7 Whites,
An unknown number of injuries. The hatred revealed displayed there was bigotry
in the North equal to the South and was a prelude to the terrible Red Summer or
1919.
In 2024 President Biden signed a
proclamation for the establishment of a national monument at the site of the
attack. The monument, is currently under construction, It will sit on land
near Madison and 10th Street.
Sources:
https://www.lib.niu.edu/1996/iht329622.html
https://visitspringfieldillinois.com/BlogDetails/History_of_the_Springfield_1908_Race_Riot
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