page_title: Springfield race riot of 1908
section_title: Alleged rape of Mabel Hallam
hierarchical_section_title: Springfield race riot of 1908 / Inciting crimes / Alleged rape of Mabel Hallam
caption_attribution_description: English: Mabel Hallam. c. 1908
context_page_description: The Springfield race riot of 1908 were events of mass racial violence committed against African Americans by a mob of about 5,000 white Americans and European immigrants in Springfield, Illinois, between August 14 and 16, 1908. Two black men had been arrested as suspects in a rape, and attempted rape and murder. The alleged victims were two young white women and the father of one of them. When a mob seeking to lynch the men discovered the sheriff had transferred them out of the city, the whites furiously spread out to attack black neighborhoods, murdered black citizens on the streets, and destroyed black businesses and homes. The state militia was called out to quell the rioting.
  The riot, trials and aftermath are said to be one of the most well-documented examples of the complex intersection of race, class, and criminal justice in the United States. In 2008 an NPR report on the centenary of the race riot said that the fact of its taking place in a Northern state, specifically in "The Land of Lincoln", demonstrated that blacks were mistreated across the country, not just in the South, and described the event as a proxy for the story of race in America.
context_section_description: On August 14, the Illinois State Journal reported that a "respectable" young married woman had been attacked in the same working-class neighborhood as Clergy Ballard's – the North End.  Mabel V. Hallam (née Trees), the 21-year-old white wife of well-known streetcar conductor, William "Earl" Hallam, claimed that on the night of August 12, at her home, at 1153 Fifth Street, shortly before midnight, a black man cut the screen door to the back door of her home, threatened to kill her, then dragged her, naked, from bed out into her garden, where he raped her and beat her unconscious.  She alleged that after the violent assault, she leapt over a back fence and sought help from her mother-in-law.
  I was lying in my bed in the front room, with the rear door open, having the screen door latched, and was awaiting the return of my husband, who is employed on the car lines.  It was just 11:20 o'clock when that negro came into our home and came directly to my bed. He laid on the bed and grabbed hold of me. This, of course, awakened me. My husband does not possess such habits, and I asked him the question, 'Why Earl, what is wrong with you?' to which the negro replied, 'I am drunk.' Then he commenced gagging me, telling me all the time that if I made any outcry he would kill me.  I was so frightened, I could not think of any move to make, although I did manage to make a couple of light screams, one of which was heard by Mrs. Hallam, my mother-in-law, residing next door to us, and whose bedroom is only a few feet from mine.
  The fellow dragged me into the back yard, carrying and pulling me through the kitchen of our home. He pulled and jerked and yanked at me until we were in one of the outbuildings. All the time his fingers were buried into my neck and the pain was intense.  Finally, he released me, going out through the front yard.  I claimed the fence into the yard of my mother-in-law, and there met her coming to help me.  It was then 11:45 o'clock, just twenty-five minutes after he pounced upon me in my room.
  Police Chief Morris was awakened in the middle of the night with the news.  He assigned the entire police force to the case.
caption: Mabel Hallam
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