page_title: Springfield race riot of 1908
section_title: Cause
hierarchical_section_title: Springfield race riot of 1908 / Cause
caption_attribution_description: English: St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Aug 15 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: Because Springfield was "an average American city," within a state considered to be a "microcosm of the U.S.," and also because the town name, "Springfield," is the most frequently occurring community name in the U.S., with at least one "Springfield" found across 25 of the 50 states, the attacks represented the average white American pathos toward black Americans.  The attacks in Springfield were the fourth such attacks to occur in an American "Springfield" over a four-year period:
  In 1904, in Springfield, Ohio, after a police officer ended up dead following a domestic disturbance, a black man was dragged from his jail cell by a mob and hanged from an electric pole.  The mob of 1,500 men then procured combustible waste materials at the railroads and took them to the black "Levee" neighborhood along the Mad River, where they drove out occupants and set seven building on fire, leaving 150 blacks homeless.  The police allowed the attack to happen, though they knew about it for a full day.  Firemen watched the buildings burn, only to save one saloon owned by a white man.  The state militia was called in to restore order.  The city shut down the remaining black saloons, and all six men indicted for the lynching were acquitted.
  In 1906, again in Springfield, Ohio, after a bar fight left two white men cut, and another white man was killed in the railways yards, a white mob began attacking black saloons in the Levee and, "as if by common agreement," black homes.  Firefighters' hoses were cut if they tried to save black homes.  The state militia, which sympathized with the mob, and was slow to report for duty.  Attacks continued for three days until the militia finally quelled it.  Thirteen buildings of black residents were destroyed.
  In 1906, in Springfield, Missouri, a white woman, and her male companion, claimed that two masked black men knocked him down, dragged her into a field, and raped her. The next morning, two young black residents, with upstanding reputations, were arrested. Despite their white employer corroborating their alibi that they were at work, the woman's male companion reported that the two had stolen his pocket watch. The two black men were arrested.  That night, a mob of 1,000 white men stormed the black jail and bludgeoned the black men with sledgehammers. They then dragged their bodies through the streets to city square, hanged them from Gottfried Tower, and built a bonfire out of their bodies in front of a crowd of over 5,000 people.  They also killed another black man accused of killing a former Confederate soldier.  Local police did not interfere.  The next day, Easter Sunday, churchgoers sifted through the ashes for souvenirs of the men.  The Governor activated state militia.  In the days that followed, drugstores and soda shops sold postcards pictures of the men's corpses, along with medals commemorating the triple lynching. A grand jury later determined the black men were innocent when it was revealed that the white woman, and her companion, made up the entire story up. Eighteen men, including a policeman, were indicted for lynching. One trial ended in a mistrial, the others were all dismissed.
  In the immediate aftermath of the attacks in Springfield (Illinois), many people surmised that the violence was brought on by job competition, alcohol, vice, political corruption, etc.  However, over time, and with perspective, historians now agree that such things were palatable excuses, and easier to reconcile than the true underlying reasons.
  Today, most historians agree that the attacks were brought about a "strain" poor whites felt about not being able to control their political and economic reality.  This lack of perceived power is at odds with the idea of white manhood, which in the U.S., has long been synonymous with dominance of political voting rights, dominance in the economic arena, and dominance as sexual partners, and protectors, of white women, breeding an expectation of entitlement to these things.  When wages contract, job stability is threatened, cultural norms are pressed (e.g. increase of 
caption: St. Louis Post-Dispatch 15Aug1908
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