President Joe Biden is expected to sign a proclamation Friday designating Springfield, Illinois, the site of a 1908 race riot that later led to the formation of the NAACP, as a national monument.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at a press conference Wednesday that the ceremony will be held in the Oval Office on Friday and will be attended by civil rights leaders and community leaders from Springfield, President Abraham Lincoln’s hometown.
The ceremony came just five and a half weeks after Sonia Massey, a 36-year-old Black woman, was shot and killed by a white sheriff’s deputy after calling for help at her Springfield home by calling 911. Massey’s family and supporters gathered at a press conference on Wednesday to continue to seek justice in the prosecution of Deputy Shawn Grayson, who is charged with first-degree murder in her death.
“This is an untold story, and people are starting to take notice,” former Springfield NAACP President Theresa Haley said of the riots. “This is a deep, dark, dirty secret that Springfield is afraid of.”
“It’s a tragedy. It’s unfortunate that it happened on the heels of Sonia Massie, but I’ll name her. Sonia Massie. It’s about time the president, the vice president and everybody else recognizes that and makes this happen,” continued Haley, founder of Visions 1908, a civil rights, socio-economic justice and education advocacy group.
Biden’s designation would not create a memorial — there is a 100th anniversary monument in Union Square Park downtown — but Haley is pushing for a large, reflective, walk-through memorial to be built on the site of the foundations of five homes that burned during riots and were unearthed during railroad work in 2014. The project is awaiting funding.
In August 1908, a mob of white residents stormed the Illinois state capital on the pretext of carrying out the sentences of two black men, one of whom had been jailed for the sexual assault of a white woman, the other for the murder of a white man.
After authorities secretly transferred prisoners from the prison to another holding center several miles away, rioters vented their anger on the city’s black residents. Over the next few days, two innocent black men were hanged and dozens of homes and businesses were burned down in Springfield’s majority-black neighborhoods, forcing families to evacuate.
The National Guard was called in to restore order, and white rioters were indicted but later acquitted of their roles in the lynching and vandalism.
According to news accounts from the time, at least eight white people were killed and more than 100 were injured in the riots, mostly by militia members or other white people. It is unclear how many black people were injured or killed.
Frustrated civil rights leaders met in New York and chose to form the NAACP on the 100th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth, February 12, 1909. The NAACP’s original officers included scholar W.E.B. Du Bois.
Sontay Massey, who was very close to her cousin Sonia Massey, said the family is descended from William Donegan, an 84-year-old shoemaker who married a white woman who was lynched on the first night of the riots. Now, the current generation is dealing with the tragic death of another family member.
“It’s ironic that we’re standing here at the very foundation of the ideals that this family has stood for for hundreds of years. We will continue to make a difference across America. This is just the beginning,” Massey said. “It’s fitting. We’ve been a catalyst for change since 1908. We’re continuing the tradition.”
The Springfield Raid occurred more than a decade before at least 25 recorded attacks by whites on blacks in the summer of 1919, a bloody event that would later be known as the “Red Summer.”
Two years later, a white mob looted and burned Tulsa’s Greenwood neighborhood, killing as many as 300 Black residents. Biden visited Tulsa in 2021 to mark the 100th anniversary of the massacre.
Jean-Pierre called the Springfield riots “a horrific attack on the black community by a white mob” and said civil rights leaders had worked to highlight the incident “as a catalyst for national action on civil rights.” He promised that the White House would release more details ahead of an official announcement on Friday.
In 2020, the riot site near downtown Springfield was added to the National Park Service’s African American Civil Rights Network, a collection of sites and programs outlining the history of the civil rights movement. Federal grant funding is available for these sites.
“The Springfield Race Riot of 1908 marks our nation’s deep history of racial violence, was the catalyst for the founding of the NAACP, and reflects the strength and tenacity of Black Americans in the tireless fight for civil rights,” said Rep. Nikki Budzinski, whose office said she urged President Biden to designate the monument. “Today’s announcement is an important step in remembering those lost in the 1908 attack and acknowledging the impact of this tragedy.”
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