President Joe Biden signed a proclamation on Friday designating the site of the 1908 race riot in Springfield, Illinois, as a national monument. The riot, which spanned two nights in August 1908, saw a White mob wreak havoc in the city, looting, burning, and destroying Black-owned homes and businesses. This violent event, known as the Springfield Massacre, resulted in the deaths of two Black men and spurred a movement for political and racial justice, leading to the creation of the NAACP, the oldest civil rights organization in the United States.
Marking the 116th anniversary of the riots, President Biden emphasized the importance of preserving this part of history to educate future generations about America’s complex and often painful past. “Over 100 years ago, a mob not far from Lincoln’s home unleashed a race riot in Springfield that shocked the conscience of the nation,” Biden said. “A lot of people forgot it.
… We can’t let these things fade.”
Illinois Senators Tammy Duckworth and Dick Durbin, alongside civil rights leaders including NAACP President Derrick Johnson, joined the president during the ceremony in the Oval Office. Johnson remarked that the 1908 riots highlighted America’s urgent need for change. He noted, “It was a catalyst, not only for the creation of the NAACP… but a catalyst to recognize that the political tool of race and ethnic difference and othering is more harmful to our democracy than it should be.”
Senator Duckworth, who helped lead the push in Congress to designate the site a national monument, expressed hope that this recognition would ensure the lessons from the past are not forgotten.
The commemoration of the 1908 race riot coincides with ongoing calls for racial justice following recent tragic events.
Biden designates riot site monument
Kathryn Harris, former director of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, commented on the irony of Springfield—a city proud of being “The Great Emancipator” Lincoln’s hometown—having to confront its own history of racial violence.
She added, “We still have lots of work to do to improve race relations, but we won’t give up.”
The Springfield riot was part of a broader pattern of White-on-Black violence in early 20th-century America. A decade later, similar riots plagued various cities during the summer of 1919, targeting Black veterans returning from World War I. These riots were attempts to reinforce a racial hierarchy disrupted by the war, according to the National Archives.
The violence during that period was particularly brutal in Elaine, Arkansas, where over 100 Black Americans were killed. In another significant event in 1921, a White mob in Tulsa, Oklahoma, destroyed the affluent Greenwood district, known as “Black Wall Street.”
For years, Teresa Haley, former president of the Springfield chapter of the NAACP, has been striving to preserve the Springfield Massacre’s legacy through the Visions 1908 project. In 2014, local archaeologists unearthed the foundations of homes destroyed during the riot.
Haley observed that the administration’s move to declare the site a national landmark is long overdue. “The people in Springfield can truly begin to heal because this has been a deep, dark secret that no one wanted to talk about except for those of us in the Black community who were directly impacted by the 1908 riots.”
Haley is working to build a monument on land donated by the city to help preserve the riot’s legacy. “It’s going to allow people to say, ‘Oh my God, this happened right here in Springfield on the ground where I’m standing,'” she said.
“This is Springfield’s history, it’s Illinois history, and it’s American history.”
