page_title: Springfield race riot of 1908
section_title: Scott Burton
hierarchical_section_title: Springfield race riot of 1908 / Lynchings / Scott Burton
caption_attribution_description: English: Chopping up the tree Burton was lynched on for souvenirs. Chicago Tribune. 17 Aug 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: Scott Burton, a 65-year-old black man, had a small barbershop, located at 12th and Madison, that catered exclusively to white clientele.  Around 2:30 a.m., Burton had been at home with his family, and his wife, Kate (née Qualls), when the mob, offering bounties of "twenty-five dollars for a nigger!" approached his home and threatened them.  Burton allegedly fired a warning shot out over the crowd, further enraging them.  Moments later, the mob rushed into his home:
  Father was sitting in the house with us when the mob came around the corner.  Some of them came into the house...Several of them struck him with bottles, and one man had an axe, which he hit him with...The men then took him out of the house, and that is the last we saw.
  — Burton's daughter
  The mob beat Burton (who was falsely identified in some reports as "Charles Hunter") until his head was "a bloody lacerated mass of flesh.  While he was unconscious, they then tied a rope around his neck and dragged him one block south, to Madison and Twelfth streets, to a tree near his barbershop, as men and women spat on him.  The mob, including Mabel Hallam's husband, William, sought to lynch Burton, with one of the mom participants calling out, "Get the rope."  However, the mob did not have any rope on hand.  Someone grabbed a nearby clothesline, wrapped it around Burton's neck.  They then stripped off his clothes and pulled the clothesline up, over the tree, and hanged him.  After he was dead, the mob mutilated his body, riddling it with 30 bullets, slashing it with knives, and attempting to set it on fire.  Children played with Burton's body, swinging it back and forth on the tree, while the mob shouted: "We've got one, hurrah!  Look at that nigger swing!"  They then danced around it.
  The mob then burned down Burton's barbershop. As it burned, mob members raced to ensure the fire didn't spread to the adjoining white businesses.
  Burton would later be blamed for his own death, by Governor Deneen, who suggested that Burton incensed the mob when he fired a warning shot, trying to protect his family and property.
caption: Chopping up the tree Burton was lynched on for souvenirs. Chicago Tribune. 17 Aug 1908.
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