"Springfield Illinois Race Riot of 1908"

Was a mas Civil Disturbance in Springfield Illinois.Sparked by the transfer of two African American prisoners out of the city by the county sheriff.This act enraged many citizens,who responded by rioting in African-Americans neighborhoods,destroying and burning African-American owned businesses and homes,and killing African-Americans citizens.By the end of the riot,there were at least seven deaths and $200,000 in property damage.It was the only riot against African-American in the United States history in which more whites (five) were recorded than African-Americans (two).The riot led to the formation of the NAACP.Around the start of the 20th century,Springfield,Illinois was rapidly-growing industrial center,with the highest percentage of African-American of any comparably sized city in Illinois.African-Americans had been migrating for work and with 2300 residents,in 1900 comprised 6.5 percent of the town's population.Although they were generally kept to lower-class and unskilled jobs,and lived in segregated areas,there was fierce job competition with European immigrants.Industries sometimes  used African-American workers as strikebreakers during labor strikes.Town residents worried about political power.
"It is the central paradox of our history that a nation based on the respect for law and order should so often resort to violence to maintain the inequities of race and class.
On Saturday,July 4,1908,someone broke into the home of Clergy Ballard,a white mining engineer .Clergy awoke and rose to investigate,finding a man near his daughter's bed.The intruder fled the house and Clergy gave chase.After he caught up,the intruder and attacked him,slashing  his throat with a straight razor.Before he died on Sunday,Clergy identified his assailant as Joe James,a young African-American man new to town.White residents had found Joe sleeping off a drunk night in the North End,a white working-class neighborhood,beat him before the police took him away.They arrested him,and locked him in the city jail.The press suggested that Clergy was saving his daughter from sexual attack,which inflamed residents more.On August 14,that year,the local Illinois State Journal newspaper ran the story of a white woman,Mabel Hallam,who had allegedly  been rape by a local African-American caretaker,George Richardson.Mabel the 21-year wife of a well known streetcar conductor,claimed that George had assaulted her the night before.Police arrested George and took him to the city jail.Later on August 14,a crowd of ethnic whites,mostly men,gathered downtown Springfield,outraged that two African-American men,Joe and George,had had allegedly committed brutal crimes against whites.The large crowd,by 7:30 numbering 5,000 to 10,000,went to the jail and demanded the release of the prisionersSheriff Charles Werner had gotten them out and transferred them to safety in Bloomington 64 miles away,with the help of restaurant owner Harry Loper he had been through a riot in Cincinnati and  hoped to avoid another one.When the crowd learned that the two African-American prisoners had been moved with Harry's help,they went to his restaurant for retaliation.The sheriff sent about ten  cavalry but forbade them to fire.The mob trashed Harry's fine restaurant:its  elegant interior and all the furnishings,and overturned and burned his expensive automobile,while he escaped.Realizing that the local authorities were overwhelmed,Governor Charles Samuel Deneen activated the state militia.At Harry's,a white workman of 18 was shot and died in the crush of the mob in the basement,the first causality of the riot.The crowd began to attack the African-Americans areas.It moved to the Levee (Seventh& Washington),a predominantly African-American business area,including dives and saloons as well as more legitimate businesses.First they attacked the pawnshop of John Olberman,who was Jewish,and stole guns and ammunition.They destroyed a total of 35 African-American owned businesses and shattered windows and storefronts along Washington Street.They especially destroyed the saloons of two African-American owned business and political leaders,one active with the Republicans and the other with the Democrats.The African-American defended their businesses on Washington Street and three more white men were shot,one died by the mob,and the other two of their wounds.Otherwise,half the causalities were from gunshots and a quarter from bricks,used by both defenders in the Levee and especially by the mob.This was the only race riot against African-Americans in the U.S. in which white deaths outnumbered those of African-Americans.The crowd move toward the badlands,the heart of the African-American residential area,and filled with substandard housing leased at high rates, to them,but middle and upper-class residents live there too.The mob burned African-American owned homes in the Badlands,destroying a four-block area   and doing much damage to neighboring streets.They encountered Scott Burton,an African-American who owned his barber shop and had only whites as clients.Defending his business by firing a warning shot,Scott was killed by returning fire from the mob.They burned his shop and dragged his body to a nearby saloon hanging it outside from a tree.By this time,an estimated 12,000 whites had gathered to watch the houses burn.When firefighters arrived,people in the crowd impeded their progress and cut their hoses.African-American citizens fled town,found refuge with sympathetic whites,or hid in the State Arsenal,where the National Guards protected them.The National Guard finally dispersed the crowd later that night after reinforcements arrived after 2 am.That next day,August 15,as thousands of African-Americans residents fled the city,another 5,000 National Guard troops and militia arrived to keep the peace,not early enough to save the second African-American victim of the mob.Curiosity seekers and tourists who had read about the riots in the newspapers also came to the stricken city.A new mob formed and approached the State Arsenal,where many African-American residents had taken refuge.When confronted by a National Guardsman,the crowd changed direction.Several hundred men and boys went to the home of African-American resident William Donnegan,who was known for his marriage to Sarah Rudolph,an Irish-German woman about thirty years younger.He was 84 or 76-years old.When William came outside after threats of burning his house,the mob captured him, and cut his throat,and lynched him in a tree across the street,two blocks from the governor's office.Sarah escaped with their infant daughter and was taken in by a neighbor.The National Guard quelled the riots that day,leaving 40 homes and 24 businesses in ruins,and seven people confirmed dead:two African-American men and five whites who were killed in the violence.Some of the causalities were shot by African-Americans defending their homes and businesses.There were rumored rumors to have been several more unreported deaths.A grand jury brought 107 indictments against nearly 80 individuals who had allegedly participated in the riots (including four police officers),only one man,a 20-year-old Russian Jewish vegetable peddler named Abraham Raymer,was convicted and there were a few misdemeanor pleas.His crime was stealing a saber from a guard.Abraham had previously been tried for the murder of William Donnegan,as he had been placed on the scene,but was acquitted of that and serious charge in two later, trials result that set the tone for the rest of the cases.Kate Howard,a white woman who had encouraged the early violence,committed suicide before facing charges against her.Mabel Hallam later admitted that her accusation of rape against George Richardson was false,and he was release from jail without incident.She and her husband moved to Chicago.Later that year,Joe James was convicted of the murder of Clergy and hanged in the Sangamon Jail on October 13, 1908.As a direct result of the Springfield Race Riot,African Americans and other concerned citizens met in New York City to discuss solutions to racial problems in the U.S. They formed the NAACP,which followed as a national organization for civil rights.