* C-SPAN…

President Biden signs a proclamation designating Springfield 1908 Race Riot National Monument in Springfield, IL. pic.twitter.com/xJjI6mHGAm

— CSPAN (@cspan) August 16, 2024

* Reuters…

President Joe Biden on Friday designated a national monument to commemorate a 1908 race riot in Springfield, Illinois, that left several people dead, hundreds injured and destroyed dozens of Black-owned businesses and homes. […]

A ceremony held on Friday in the Oval Office featured civil rights leaders and community leaders from Springfield, which is also former President Abraham Lincoln’s hometown.

“We’ve made a lot of progress but we can’t never stop,” Biden said during the event, adding that it was important for people to remember what had happened. […]

“The new national monument will tell the story of a horrific attack by a white mob on a Black community that was representative of the racism, intimidation, and violence that Black Americans experienced across the country,” the White House said in a statement.

* NPR…

The events in Springfield — the hometown of President Abraham Lincoln — were spurred by the July 1908 murder of a white resident, allegedly at the hands of a Black man. Tensions worsened a month later when another Black man was accused of raping a white woman.

The alleged rape victim later admitted to lying to cover up a consensual affair she was having with a white man.

In August, a white mob of thousands terrorized the city’s 2,500 Black residents. Citizens were attacked and brutalized, and the riots resulted in the arson of dozens of Black-owned homes and businesses. Parts of the rampage took place just a few blocks from Lincoln’s family home. […]

“One of the really shocking things about the well-publicized Springfield race riot — and its association with Abraham Lincoln — was that the North had a race problem,” Senechal de la Roche told NPR in 2008.

The crimes against the city’s Black residents so horrified Black people across the country that it inspired the formation of the NAACP, which remains in existence today.

* An excerpt of the 2008 story from NPR…

As many as 1,000 people marched to the black business district and destroyed and looted virtually every black business downtown. The crowd moved to a nearby, very large, working-class and poor African-American neighborhood, where most blacks had either hidden themselves or left town.

The white mob “went from one end to the other looting homes, damaging homes and ultimately setting them on fire. By the time they were through, they’d displaced at least 40 families,” Senechal de la Roche says. The state militia arrived and found the mob preparing to lynch a black barber.

On the second day of rioting, the rioters began targeting high-status African-Americans. The mob’s first target was an 80-year-old retired cobbler and real estate dealer named William Donnegan. An excerpt from In Lincoln’s Shadow describes the crowd’s horrific actions:

The old man was dragged outside to the front yard and beaten with bricks torn up from the sidewalk. One rioter produced a razor and cut Donnegan’s throat. Dragging the dying man to the street, the rioters tied a small cotton clothesline around his neck and tried to hoist him to the limb of a small maple tree in front of the school across the street. When the militia and police arrived, most of the crowd had already fled, and the authorities could do nothing but cut William Donnegan down and carry him off.

Senechal de la Roche says Springfield residents resorted to this level of violence to avenge the two alleged victims and, because the “largely working-class rioters were expressing resentment over visible black success and influence in the community.”

* Courtesy of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum…

* WAND…

The monument will be located at the uncovered site of the race riot. The announcement came after several actions by community members and organizations to push for national recognition of the site.

“It’s important to educate the current generation as well as future generations, and this monument will stand alongside Lincoln and everything about Lincoln,” said Ken Page, President of the Springfield chapter of the ACLU and member of the 1908 Race Riot Monument Committee. “So maybe Springfield will eventually live up to Lincoln’s legacy of equality, justice, and all those other things.”

The monument will have national impacts as well, as it is the first time the site of a lynching has been memorialized, according to Congresswoman Nikki Budzinski (IL-13). She says it’s important that we recognize the bad parts of our history.

“We’re going to honor our history, which is often a complicated history, a dark history, but that we’re going to honor it and tell it truthfully, and we’re going to look forward, and that we have a lot of work to do,” said Budzinski. “We must tell the story, tell the truth, tell the history of our community. And again, it’s about the progress that we still need to make.”

…Adding… Sen. Tammy Duckworth…

U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) today joined President Joe Biden in the Oval Office for the President’s signing ceremony to officially declare the 1908 Springfield Race Riot Site as a national monument to be managed by the U.S. National Park Service through an Antiquities Act proclamation. Duckworth has been a steadfast leader in securing national monument recognition for the 1908 Springfield Race Riot Site, a critical event in American history that spurred the creation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). With less than a quarter of National Parks devoted to recognizing the histories of diverse peoples and cultures, designating the 1908 Race Riot Site a national monument will help guarantee that public lands reflect the diversity of our country.

“The 1908 Springfield Race Riot site is of extraordinary cultural and historical importance to our state and to this country—a searing, horrific incident that galvanized the creation of the NAACP,” Duckworth said. “I’ve been working for years to designate this site as a national monument to help ensure the painful lessons learned here will not be lost for the generations of Americans to come. I’m proud that President Biden took action to help ensure this history is properly honored and making our national parks better reflect our nation’s people and stories.”

116 years ago this week, a violent mob of white residents murdered at least six Black Americans, burned down Black homes and businesses and attacked hundreds of residents for no other reason than the color of their skin. Duckworth began calling for national monument recognition in 2018, first leading the Springfield 1908 Race Riot National Monument Act, with U.S Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), in 2019 and again in 2021. Last year they re-introduced the legislation, which was reported favorably out of committee, with U.S. Representative Nikki Budzinski (D-IL-13) introducing companion legislation in the House.

During an excavation as part of the Springfield High Speed Rail project, foundations and artifacts from homes destroyed during the riot were uncovered. An agreement with community members was reached in 2018 to excavate the remains and designate the uncovered site a memorial.

Duckworth has made elevating disenfranchised communities and their stories one of her main priorities while in Congress. Last year, after continued efforts from Duckworth, the Biden Administration designated the church that held Emmett Till’s pivotal open-casket wake in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood as a national monument. Duckworth’s leadership was critical in the site designation, originally introducing the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley, and Roberts Temple National Historic Site Act in 2021 and again in 2023.