page_title: Springfield race riot of 1908
section_title: Joe James accused
hierarchical_section_title: Springfield race riot of 1908 / Inciting crimes / Murder of Clergy Ballard / Statements of attack / Joe James accused
caption_attribution_description: English: Joe James | Joe James after beaten by Springfield mob. Jul 6, 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: Joe James was a young man from Birmingham, Alabama.  He had two brothers, Benjamin and Daniel, and two sisters, Lizzie [Lockhart] and Bertha [McCoy].  His father died when he was two.  He was then raised by his uncle, Rev. Van B. James, and had a boyhood "but little different from that of the typical negro youth."
  His uncle raised him in the church, in Avondale, where he learned to read, write and play piano, until he was 13-years-old.  He then went to live with his mother, Katherine, back in Birmingham, until she moved to Hattiesburg, Mississippi for work.  In 1903, she briefly returned and married Walter Roberts, but left back to Hattiesburg in 1904, taking James with her.  In May 1907, James moved back to Birmingham, where he worked in a brush factory, as a "bristle-puller," and drove a coal wagon, before opting to leave.
  Over about four months, James moved to several places including Memphis, Kansas City, East St. Louis, and Alton, doing a series of odd jobs, before coming to Springfield.
  He arrived on June 1, 1908, by hitching a ride on freight train going from St. Louis to Chicago.
  James wandered around Springfield, attempting to obtain work in a brickyard, or as a moulder.  However, no such work was available, and he found work at one of the six black saloons (presumably, Bud Brandon's saloon), on Sixth Street.  He worked there that evening where he played a game of pool with some "negroes who became sore on him" because he won. He worked past closing, and into the morning of June 2.  It was reported that, at some point that day, James got into an altercation at Bud Brandon's saloon, on East Washington street, though this altercation was not verified.
  When James left work, he encountered, William Burton and James Loomis, two of the city's four black police officers. Burton and Loomis were in plainclothes when they saw James walking and, assuming he was loitering, ordered him to leave town.  Rather, James "offended the officers" when he reportedly told them:
  ...A nigger has as much right to be here as a white man.  A white man is no better than a nigger.
  James told the officers that he had a job, but could not recall the name of the saloon, so they did not believe him. When they threatened to arrest him, James, told them he would leave.  However James did not.
  The next day, Burton and Loomis "found him on the streets" and arrested him for vagrancy.  On June 3, he was fined $25 (about $650 in 2018), which he had no means to pay; therefore he was given a jail sentence.  His release was set for July 7.
  James, who had been arrested once in Birmingham for trespassing, but never convicted of any crime, was reportedly a model prisoner, permitted to leave and run jailhouse errands as a "trusty".  However, on July 4, about 6:00 p.m., after completing his prison duty for the day – loading a lot of "condemned dogs" – James was given about $0.40 ($10.00 in 2018) and allowed to go get molasses, bread and pie for other prisoners.  The police claimed that James left the jail "barefooted."  James did not return.
  It was Independence Day and most of the retail establishments closed at noon.  People were celebrating, drinking early and preparing to see fireworks in the evening.  James, a teen who had not been exposed to this level of excitement in Alabama, was enticed to the atmosphere.  He wandered into "The Levee" – the city's black vice district, on Washington Street between 7th and 10th Streets – which was filled with an assortment of six saloons, prostitutes, gambling, opiates, etc.  The area, along with its adjoining "black" areas (i.e. "The Badlands"), was disdained by many whites, which they called a "den of sin," but also for the normalcy at which blacks and whites intermingled, socially and sexually:
  ...the black belt in Springfield, one of the most vicious districts in the north.  The houses of this black belt are hovels.  Whites and blacks lived together.  Children ran through the street of this miserable settlement who know not their parents.  Their hair indicates one race and their fair skin the other...[and there are] 
caption: (l) Joe James; (r) Joe James, on Jul 6, 1908, after being beaten in street
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