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St. Louis, MO → Springfield, IL → St. Louis, MO 217.0 mi (349.2 km) |
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It’s a scandal, an outrage, everyone!
I’d mapped out my final National Park Service sites with a tidy conclusion this July, when suddenly, out of nowhere, President Biden added three national monuments to the list at the tail end of 2024! On August 16, he added Springfield 1908 Race Riots National Monument, followed by Carlisle Federal Indian Boarding School National Monument on December 9, and finally Frances Perkins National Monument on December 16! I decided to call these the Middle Finger Monuments, partly because his successor would declare the diverse stories told by places like these “illegal and immoral.” Also, I had been to most of these places! In fact, I’d been in Springfield twice already, most recently for Cicadamaggedon three months earlier! Argh!
So that put me in a pickle, since all three of these monuments were east of the Mississippi, I’d just finished a long and pricey trip to Africa, and I was about to embark on a long and pricey final trip to Alaska. I’d have to save on time and a hotel, and folks, can you believe it? I made a day trip to the Land of Lincoln, taking off from LAX at 5:00 AM with a return ticket for 9:40 PM! Sadly, I was a week too early for the International Horseradish Festival in Collinsville, which only extended that middle finger mentality!
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But, if I had to return to Springfield, I was at least going to see some things I hadn’t seen before, like Springfield’s Union Station, not to be confused with the Union Stations in St. Louis or Los Angeles! From 1898 until 1971, this Romanesque Revival station served the Illinois Central Railroad, which connected Chicago to Southern States like Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia. In so doing, it gave a lifeline to Black folks looking for work and unable to get it in the post-war South! And that’s the beginning of this monument’s story.
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At the northeast end of Union Square Park, two chimney-shaped bronze sculptures stood out with the Union Station in the background. This was Acts of Intolerance, sculpted in 2008 to commemorate the centennial of the Springfield race riots that led to the founding of the NAACP. These chimneys represent the last ones standing after two nights of violence in 1908 and show folks arriving by train, picking up the pieces of destruction, and taking up arms in vigilance afterward! This definitely seemed like a story fit for a national monument!
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The Springfield 1908 Race Riot National Monument was little more than a sign in the parking lot of HSHS St. John’s Hospital Women & Children’s Clinic overlooking the train tracks. I won’t lie, it was a little underwhelming to look at, but like Yucca House National Monument, the core history had yet to be excavated! That’s because the riots of August 1908 flattened an entire neighborhood—40 Black-owned homes and businesses—leaving behind only the two burned chimneys that inspired Mr. Jackson’s sculpture! This tiny, 1.57-acre patch of grass covers the foundations of five known houses from that neighborhood! Will they ever be excavated? Who knows? Google Maps won’t even acknowledge the site!
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Today, railroad tracks and utility buildings cover all other remains of the “Badlands” neighborhood and mark the limits of how far a visitor can walk in the monument. Across these tracks, at Eleventh and Madison, rioters beat and kidnapped barber, Scott Burton, at 2:00 AM on August 15th and paraded him a block south to lynch him in front of a saloon. They continued to desecrate his body until the National Guard arrived the following day. That’s pretty heavy and sickening stuff. How’d it come to this? To find out, I’d have to go beyond the monument and follow a network of numbered markers, kind of like the aviation scavenger hunt in Dayton, which told the story of events in the order they happened.
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It all began at the old county jail on August 14, when a white mob discovered their lynching targets, Joe James and George Richardson, had been secretly transported to Bloomington where their trials could continue. While Joe James was ultimately found guilty of murder and executed, George Richardson had been falsely accused of rape! In any case, the mob did not care about the nuances of justice, and there’s a solid reason why this marker is at the old county jail site!
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Next to be demolished was Loper’s Restaurant. Harry Loper had assisted Sheriff Werner in the secret prisoner transport, so the mob destroyed his restaurant and car. Louis Johnson, dining in the restaurant, was the first person killed in the riot!
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The mob pressed into a Black business district called The Levee and broke windows and doors to loot the stores! They destroyed 15 Black-owned businesses and several owned by Jewish folks, including Fishman’s Pawn Shop, where they stole weapons to use in their destruction of the “Badlands” neighborhood!
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After destroying the neighborhood and lynching Mr. Burton, the mob took a break and went shopping at Payne’s Hardware for more lynching rope. During this brief respite, 2-3,000 Black Springfield residents fled the city, most never to return. It was truly shocking for this level of racial violence to take place in the home of Abraham Lincoln with a population of Black folks that was already so tiny (5.5%)!
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As civilians fled the “Badlands,” 5,000 Illinois National Guard troops moved in, setting up headquarters at the State Arsenal, which Governor Deneen had also set aside as a refuge for victims of the riot. The mob meant to attack those refugees, but the presence of the National Guard there caused them to turn their sights elsewhere.
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Those troops interrupted the lynching of William Donnegan, who, while old, had wealth and connections that the mob found threatening. Although the militia stopped the mob from hanging him, Mr. Donnegan died from blood loss the following day at the hospital where the national monument sign now resides. After this incident, the mob dispersed, and the riot was over.
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When the law took over at the Sangamon County Courthouse (formerly the State Capitol of Illinois), the results were somewhere predictable. 18-year old Joe James was convicted of murder and executed on October 23, 1908. George Richardson was released when his accuser admitted she’d made up the charges against him. As for the rioters, a special Grand Jury levied 107 indictments against them, but only one—petty larceny—led to conviction. With no repercussions for those who participated in the murder of seven and the destruction of $150,000 in property, it was time to organize a movement for civil rights. In response to the riots, Mary White Ovington, William English Walling, and Henry Moskowitz called together the first meeting of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the largest and oldest civil rights group in America!
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As I mulled over what I’d learned today, I spotted a humble plaque across from the old capitol marking the site where the Donner Party had left on their ill-fated journey to California! This square had all kinds of significance to it that I had completely missed on my previous visits to Springfield. Okay, maybe this wasn’t a total middle finger trip. It turns out, every city has layers to its history, and I would have missed out on some important moments if this monument had never been declared. I wonder what this will mean for the next two.
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Wouldn’t you know it, but right on the edge of where the 1908 race riots came to a legal end was where Abraham Lincoln had practiced law with his partner, William Herndon, from 1843 until 1852! They could easily have watched the westbound emigrants depart on their lunch breaks! This huge Greek Revival commercial block is the only surviving building from President Lincoln’s time as a lawyer! It gets one to wonder how the Great Emancipator would have treated legal cases like those that took place in 1908. And gosh, that lens flare sure gave me a pretty Lincolnesque beard! I better clean my camera before the next adventure!
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Having seen all I’d planned to see, and dined on some tasty pasta, it was time for me to motor back to St. Louis to catch my return flight to Los Angeles. This monument was a dark discovery for sure, but I’m glad it was added to the National Park Service when it was. By May 2025, the NPS was facing a 37% funding cut, while the Historic Preservation Fund had 93% of its budget on the chopping block! Middle fingers sure have been flying, and my flight was no exception, delayed until 11:42 PM! It’s a weird feeling, though, that I have so few flights left. I’m thankful that these monuments gave me a little extra travel excitement.
One finger down, two to go!
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Total Ground Covered: 217.0 mi (349.2 km) |
More 2026 Adventures |