According to Police Captain Hogan, when the Negroes were arrested in the church, knives were found on the persons of two of them. One of these, Sam Hayes, admitted to the police at that time that he had stabbed a white man at Forty-seventh and Halsted streets. His story was that when he asked the newsboy at the corner for a newspaper in which to wrap his overalls, Barrett threatened him and then struck him, and the stabbing followed.
During the night following the murder, Chief of Police Garrity issued a statement which was published conspicuously in the morning newspapers, and was most effectively worded to prevent misunderstanding of the incident and avert use of it to inflame racial hostility. The statement began:
There has been no race riot. The killing at Forty-seventh and Halsted streets was merely a street-corner fight. There was grave danger that it would be followed by serious trouble. Precautionary measures were taken at once to forestall the recurrence of the riots, with the destruction of life and property, of last summer.
This was followed by a detailed account of the special measures and distribution of police to handle the situation.
II. The Springfield Riot
August 14–15, 1908
The race riot at Springfield, Illinois, in August, 1908, which cost the lives of two Negroes and four white men, is an outstanding example of the racial bitterness and brutality that can be provoked by unsubstantiated rumor or, as in this case, by deliberate falsehood. The two Negro victims were innocent and unoffending. They were lynched under the shadow of the capitol of Lincoln's state, within half a mile of the only home he ever owned, and two miles from the monument which marks the grave of the great emancipator.
A second fundamental factor in the Springfield riot situation was the fertile field prepared by admittedly lax law enforcement and by tolerance in the community of vicious conditions, the worst of which were permitted to surround the Negro areas.
The spark which touched off the explosion was the old story of the violation of a white woman by a Negro, and not until the damage had been done was its falsity confessed by the woman who had told it.
On the night of Friday, August 14, 1908, according to her story, Mrs. H——, wife of a street-railway conductor, was asleep in her room. She was alone in the house. She declared that a Negro entered, dragged her from her bed to the back yard, and there committed the crime. She said she had attempted to scream but was choked by her assailant, who left her lying unconscious in the garden.
A Negro, George Richardson, who had been at work on a neighboring lawn the day before the attack, was accused by Mrs. H—— and was arrested when he returned to work the next morning. He was placed in the county jail and on August 19 he was indicted.
During inquiry by a special grand jury certain facts were disclosed concerning Mrs. H—'s character, and she admitted that, though she had been brutally beaten by a white man on the night indicated, Richardson was not present and had no connection with the affair. She admitted that she had not been raped. For reasons known only to herself, she wished to keep the name of the real assailant a secret, and therefore she had accused Richardson. She signed an affidavit exonerating him. Richardson had no criminal record. He and two of his family were property owners in Springfield.
While Richardson was in custody and before he was exonerated, feeling against him was intensified because of the murder, three or four weeks before, of Clergy A. Ballard, a white man, by Joe James, a Negro tramp, who was a drug and whiskey addict. James had been taken from a freight train and placed in jail for thirty days and had been released on the night of the crime. He was charged with entering the room of Ballard's daughter, Blanche, at night. Ballard grappled with him, but James broke away and ran. In the struggle Ballard was mortally injured. James was found asleep in a park near the Ballard home about noon the next day, under the influence of a drug. He was tried and hanged, and his body was taken back to Mississippi by his mother for interment. Rev. Mr. Dawson, spiritual adviser of James, stated that James declared he had no knowledge of the crime.
Springfield was, therefore, in a receptive mood when, on the morning of Friday, August 15, it got the first rumors concerning the attack on Mrs. H——. Richardson had been taken before her and partially identified. In the afternoon, when it became known that he had been arrested, crowds gathered about the jail. They seemed good-natured rather than blood-thirsty. It was also known that James, accused of the Ballard murder, occupied a cell in the jail. The sheriff preserved order through the afternoon, no effort being made to disperse the crowd of 300 or 400 persons. About five o'clock Richardson and James were taken in an automobile to Sherman, north of Springfield, and there they were transferred by train to Bloomington.
About 7:00 p.m. leadership began to develop in the mob about the jail. The leaders demanded the two Negroes, but were finally convinced by the sheriff that they were not in the jail. Then the story spread that Harry Loper, a restaurant keeper, had provided the automobile in which the men had been removed. The crowd rushed to the restaurant five blocks away. In response to the mob's hootings Loper appeared in the doorway with a firearm in his hand. About 8:30 p.m. someone threw a brick through a plate-glass window and in a few minutes the front of the restaurant had been smashed out. Then followed the complete wrecking of the restaurant, as well as the owner's automobile, which had been standing in front.
When the mob began to surge through the town the Fire Department was called to disperse it, but the mob cut the hose. Control having been lost by the sheriff and police, Governor Deneen called out the militia. The mob, by this time very much excited, started for the Negro district through Washington Street, along which a large number of Negroes lived on upper floors. Raiding second-hand stores which belonged to white men, the mob secured guns, axes, and other weapons with which it destroyed places of business operated by Negroes and drove out all of the Negro residents from Washington Street. Then it turned north into Ninth Street.
At the northeast corner of Ninth and Jefferson streets was the frame barber shop of Scott Burton, a Negro. The mob set fire to this building. From that point it went a block farther north to Madison Street and then turned east and began firing all the shacks in which Negroes and whites lived in that street.
Burton, the first victim of the mob's violence, was lynched in the yard back of his shop. The mob tied a rope around his neck and dragged him through the streets. An effort was then made to burn the body, which had been hung to a tree. This was at two o'clock in the morning.
About this time a company of militia arrived from Decatur, Illinois, and proceeded through Madison Street to Twelfth Street, where the mob was engaged in mutilating Burton's body, riddling it with bullets. The mob was twice ordered to disperse, and the militia fired in the air twice. The third time the troops fired into the ankles and legs of the mob. At least two of the men in the mob were wounded and the mob quickly gave way.
By this time the Negroes were badly frightened and began leaving town. Meanwhile, Governor Deneen had sent for more troops, including two regiments from Chicago. Before the rioting ended 5,000 militiamen were patrolling the streets of Springfield. On Saturday morning the militia began to arrive in force, including detachments from Chicago. This was a comparatively quiet day, but that night another Negro was lynched within a block of the State House. The mob gathered on the Court House Square and marched south on Fifth Street to Monroe, west on Monroe to Spring, and south on Spring to Edwards. At the southeast corner of Spring and Edwards streets a Negro named Donegan and his family had lived for many years. Donegan was eighty-four years old and owned the half-block of ground where he lived. He was found sleeping in his own yard and was quickly strung up to a tree across the street. Then his throat was cut and his body mutilated. The troops interfered at this point and cut down the man, taking him in an ambulance