Establishment of the Springfield 1908 Race Riot National Monument, 67821-67827 [2024-18999]

Agencies

• Executive Office of the President

[Federal Register Volume 89, Number 163 (Thursday, August 22, 2024)]
[Presidential Documents]
[Pages 67821-67827]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2024-18999]




                        Presidential Documents 



Federal Register / Vol. 89, No. 163 / Thursday, August 22, 2024 / 
Presidential Documents

___________________________________________________________________

Title 3--
The President

[[Page 67821]]

                Proclamation 10792 of August 16, 2024

                
Establishment of the Springfield 1908 Race Riot 
                National Monument

                By the President of the United States of America

                A Proclamation

                In August 1908, mere blocks from the former home of 
                President Abraham Lincoln, a white mob attacked the 
                Black community in Springfield, Illinois, lynching two 
                Black Americans and burning homes down to their 
                foundations. By the time the National Guard quelled the 
                violence, the mob had looted and destroyed businesses, 
                razed city blocks, and displaced hundreds of people 
                from their homes. Labeled by the media as a race riot, 
                the event was emblematic of the racism, intimidation, 
                violence, and lynchings that Black Americans 
                experienced in communities across the country in the 
                late 19th and early 20th Centuries. The horror that 
                became known as the Springfield 1908 Race Riot drew the 
                attention of national newspapers and Black and white 
                activists interested in social change. In the wake of 
                the devastation and ensuing outcry, a group of 
                visionary civic leaders launched the National 
                Association for the Advancement of Colored People, 
                which went on to achieve momentous civil rights 
                victories and continues to work toward racial justice 
                and equity.

                Today, the foundations of destroyed homes and the 
                objects they contain are tangible markers of these 
                historic events and reminders of the impact that the 
                Springfield 1908 Race Riot had on our Nation. The area 
                located between North 9th and 11th Streets, and between 
                East Mason and East Madison Streets, constitutes the 
                Springfield 1908 Race Riot Site. This site weaves 
                together two important threads in our Nation's story: 
                the hateful violence targeted against Black Americans, 
                and the power of dedicated individuals to come together 
                across racial lines to transform shock and grief into 
                hope and action.

                At the turn of the 20th Century, the United States was 
                still struggling to fulfill the promises of the 
                Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the 
                Constitution--amendments that abolished slavery; 
                guaranteed due process and equal protection under the 
                law; and prohibited abridgement of the right to vote on 
                account of race, color, or previous condition of 
                servitude. Numerous States and municipalities, 
                primarily in the South, passed anti-Black legislation, 
                including Jim Crow laws, to enforce racial segregation 
                and to maintain white structural power by restricting 
                Black people's daily lives. As millions of Black people 
                migrated to towns and cities in the North seeking a 
                better life, they were often confronted with racial 
                bias, segregated schools, discriminatory and 
                restrictive housing practices, and other forms of 
                discrimination. Black people were also subjected to a 
                nationwide wave of racial violence that began after the 
                Civil War. Between 1882 and 1910, there were 2,503 
                recorded lynchings of Black people in the United 
                States. Many lynchings during this grim chapter of 
                American history occurred during riots led by white 
                mobs engaged in a broader pattern of violence, similar 
                to the one that took place in Springfield.

                There, on Friday, August 14, 1908, a crowd of mostly 
                white men gathered outside the Sangamon County Jail, 
                which was 2 blocks from the edge of the Badlands 
                neighborhood, a community northeast of the center of 
                the city that included many low-income Black residents 
                and families. The mob

[[Page 67822]]

                was calling for the lynching of two Black men: Joe 
                James and George Richardson. James stood accused of the 
                murder of a white man and attempted assault on his 
                daughter. Richardson was accused of sexually assaulting 
                a white woman.

                The sheriff, hoping to defuse the situation and avoid 
                the white-mob lynchings that had occurred in similar 
                circumstances, arranged for the two men to be quietly 
                transferred to a jail in another town. Harry Loper, a 
                local white leader who shared the sheriff's concerns, 
                agreed to help with the transfer. When the crowd 
                learned of the sheriff's and Loper's actions, it 
                erupted in violence. The mob wreaked havoc and 
                destruction in the surrounding Badlands and Levee 
                neighborhoods--attacking and destroying dozens of 
                Black-owned businesses and residences, as well as some 
                Jewish-owned businesses and other businesses that 
                served the predominantly Black community. Loper also 
                paid a price for helping the men; after he returned, 
                the mob set fire to his car and vandalized his 
                restaurant.

                One of the buildings the mob torched was in the 
                Badlands neighborhood on 12th Street between Madison 
                and Mason Streets where Scott Burton, a Black barber, 
                was trying to protect his home. At approximately 2:30 
                a.m. on Saturday, August 15, 1908, the mob beat Burton 
                into unconsciousness before dragging him half a block 
                south to the corner of Madison and 12th Streets. There, 
                he was further brutalized and hanged from a tree, and 
                he died from his injuries. All the while, the rioters 
                celebrated his lynching.

                On Saturday, the second day of the riot, the violence 
                briefly abated as State militia reinforcements arrived 
                and Governor Charles Deneen designated the Illinois 
                State Arsenal as a temporary refuge for Black 
                residents. Black firefighters of Firehouse No. 5 
                responded to fires and fought to quench the flames and 
                save the homes of Black residents and Black-owned 
                businesses, even after being dismissed by the Mayor of 
                Springfield. Despite these actions, by 7:00 p.m. 
                Saturday evening, crowds again amassed and resumed the 
                mob violence of the previous night.

                That same day, the riot reached the home of William K. 
                Donnegan, a Black 84-year-old retired cobbler who had 
                made shoes for Abraham Lincoln and served as an 
                Underground Railroad operative. Donnegan was married to 
                a white woman and lived with his family in a nearby 
                middle-class white neighborhood. On Saturday night, a 
                group of white men gathered outside of Donnegan's 
                house, beat him with bricks, and cut his throat with a 
                razor. They dragged him across the street and hanged 
                him from a tree in the neighboring schoolyard, just 2 
                blocks from the Illinois State Capitol. The police and 
                National Guard personnel found Donnegan still alive, 
                and took him to St. John's Hospital, where he received 
                medical care along with other people injured in the 
                riot--Black and white alike. Although he survived the 
                night, he died the next day from his injuries.

                Soon after the riot, George Richardson's accuser issued 
                a signed statement confessing that her assailant had in 
                fact been a white man. Joe James's story took a 
                different turn. His lawyer tried to remove James's case 
                from Sangamon County, arguing he would not be able to 
                get an impartial jury there, but those efforts failed 
                and James was tried and convicted in the same community 
                that carried out the race riot. On October 23, 1908, 
                James was executed by hanging at the Sangamon County 
                Jail. Only one white rioter was convicted of a violent 
                crime in connection with the destruction wrought on 
                Springfield's Black community. In a poignant 
                postscript, the two men lynched, Scott Burton and 
                William K. Donnegan, were laid to rest in the same 
                Springfield cemetery as President Lincoln.

                The national and local press covered the Springfield 
                1908 Race Riot extensively. The devastation of the 
                Badlands neighborhood and nearby sites captured the 
                attention of prominent civil rights leaders and spurred 
                new action. In response to the Springfield 1908 Race 
                Riot, an interracial group of dozens of civil rights 
                leaders, including W.E.B. Du Bois, William English 
                Walling, Mary White Ovington, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, and 
                Mary Church Terrell, issued an open letter in February 
                1909 ``taking stock of the nation's progress''

[[Page 67823]]

                on the centennial of Lincoln's birth. Invoking 
                Lincoln's words from 1858 that ``[a] house divided 
                against itself cannot stand,'' the group ``call[ed] 
                upon all the believers in democracy to join in a 
                national conference for the discussion of present 
                evils, the voicing of protests, and the renewal of the 
                struggle for civil and political liberty.''

                This call led to a meeting in the spring of 1909 of a 
                group initially called the National Negro Committee to 
                discuss forming a permanent, national organization that 
                would advocate to combat lynching and racial prejudice, 
                improve the lives of Black Americans, and secure the 
                civil and political rights guaranteed to them by the 
                Constitution. On May 12, 1910, the National Negro 
                Committee formally named the new organization the 
                National Association for the Advancement of Colored 
                People (NAACP).

                For more than a century, the NAACP has been at the 
                forefront of key legal and political movements to end 
                lynching, remove barriers of racial discrimination, and 
                advance civil and political rights. The NAACP and its 
                legal team devised the transformative, decades-long 
                legal strategy culminating in Brown v. Board of 
                Education (1954), in which the Supreme Court declared 
                the ``separate but equal'' doctrine to be 
                unconstitutional and gutted the legal underpinnings of 
                segregation and Jim Crow laws.

                The NAACP, along with partners and allies, turned the 
                Springfield 1908 Race Riot's legacy from one of tragedy 
                alone into one that led to enduring progress and 
                change. Yet those violent and fateful days had 
                persistent discriminatory effects on Springfield. 
                Although the rioters did not succeed in driving Black 
                residents from the city entirely, their actions led to 
                the displacement of Black people from the Badlands and 
                other affected neighborhoods and paved the way for so-
                called ``urban renewal projects'' that erased much of 
                the neighborhoods' physical imprint. One of the 
                country's first public housing projects was constructed 
                on remnants of the Badlands neighborhood. The 8-block 
                John Hay Homes housing complex, built in the 1940s, 
                provided low-income housing, primarily to white people. 
                The John Hay Homes and other projects drastically 
                altered the landscape, demolishing blocks of structures 
                to develop facilities including high-rise apartments, 
                low-rent apartments, an expressway, and a civic center.

                Notwithstanding the changes to the surrounding 
                neighborhoods, the Springfield 1908 Race Riot Site, a 
                2-block area stretching northward from East Madison 
                Street between North 9th and 11th Streets, still 
                contains archeological remains and scars of the riot. 
                The site, which has been identified as the approximate 
                point where the violent assault on the Badlands 
                neighborhood began in 1908, provides some of the last 
                physical remains of the race riot and the neighborhood 
                it destroyed, including the charred foundations of five 
                houses burned by the white mob in 1908.

                Archeological excavations of the site have uncovered 
                other historic objects remaining at the site, including 
                a partial cellar, stone steps, and a brick walk. This 
                area and the archeological artifacts it contains have a 
                singular ability to tell the story of the race riot and 
                its impacts on Black residents at this pivotal point in 
                Springfield and the Nation's history.

                Archeological studies have concluded that the site 
                likely contains significant additional resources and 
                artifacts that could help further illuminate the 
                history of the Badlands neighborhood. In addition to 
                the five burned houses, the site encompasses the plots 
                of several other buildings demolished in the riot. 
                Spared the architectural erasure of urban renewal, the 
                Springfield 1908 Race Riot Site can help bring greater 
                attention to this chapter in American history. The 
                National Park Service has recognized the historical 
                significance of this site to civil rights history by 
                adding it to the African American Civil Rights Network.

                Preservation of the Springfield 1908 Race Riot Site 
                will protect the objects of historic interest found 
                therein from removal, development, or other activities 
                that could erase their presence in the area. It will 
                also ensure that the site and its objects remain 
                available for future generations to learn

[[Page 67824]]

                about the Springfield 1908 Race Riot and how this 
                brutal event near President Lincoln's home underscored 
                the pattern of racially motivated violence perpetrated 
                on Black people throughout the country and catalyzed 
                the formation of the NAACP. Ida B. Wells-Barnett, one 
                of the co-founders of the NAACP and a national hero who 
                led the campaign against lynching, described the 
                Springfield 1908 Race Riot as showing that ``the hue 
                and cry once started stops at no bounds.'' Protecting 
                the Springfield 1908 Race Riot Site is essential to 
                preserve and narrate the history that galvanized civil 
                rights leaders to establish an institution to work for 
                real and lasting change, creating hope for our 
                democracy out of the embers of this neighborhood in 
                Springfield, Illinois.

                WHEREAS, section 320301 of title 54, United States Code 
                (the ``Antiquities Act''), authorizes the President, in 
                his discretion, to declare by public proclamation 
                historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric 
                structures, and other objects of historic or scientific 
                interest that are situated upon the lands owned or 
                controlled by the Federal Government to be national 
                monuments, and to reserve as a part thereof parcels of 
                land, the limits of which shall be confined to the 
                smallest area compatible with the proper care and 
                management of the objects to be protected; and

                WHEREAS, the Springfield 1908 Race Riot Site preserves 
                some of the last remaining objects of historic interest 
                from the Springfield 1908 Race Riot, memorializes the 
                area where these tragic and notorious events occurred, 
                and has been found to meet the criteria for national 
                significance by the National Park Service in its June 
                2023 Special Resource Study; and

                WHEREAS, the City of Springfield, Illinois, has 
                expressed support for the establishment of a national 
                monument to be administered by the National Park 
                Service; and

                WHEREAS, the City of Springfield has donated fee 
                interest in approximately 0.39 acres of city-owned land 
                within the Springfield 1908 Race Riot Site to the 
                National Park Foundation; and

                WHEREAS, St. John's Hospital of the Hospital Sisters of 
                the Third Order of St. Francis has donated fee interest 
                in approximately 1.18 acres of land within the 
                Springfield 1908 Race Riot Site to the National Park 
                Foundation; and

                WHEREAS, the National Park Foundation has relinquished 
                and conveyed all of the lands and interests in lands 
                associated with the Springfield 1908 Race Riot Site 
                described above to the Federal Government for the 
                purpose of establishing a unit of the National Park 
                System; and

                WHEREAS, the City of Springfield owns additional land 
                within the Springfield 1908 Race Riot Site that 
                potentially contains archeological artifacts and has 
                indicated an interest in making further land donations 
                in the future; and

                WHEREAS, the designation of a national monument to be 
                administered by the National Park Service would 
                recognize the historic significance of the Springfield 
                1908 Race Riot Site, particularly the events that took 
                place at these locations from August 14-16, 1908, and 
                their role in inspiring the formation of a national 
                civil rights organization, and would provide a national 
                platform for preserving and interpreting this important 
                history; and

                WHEREAS, I find that all the objects identified above, 
                and objects of the type identified above within the 
                area described herein, are objects of historic interest 
                in need of protection under section 320301 of title 54, 
                United States Code, regardless of whether they are 
                expressly identified as objects of historic interest in 
                the text of this proclamation; and

                WHEREAS, I find that the boundaries of the monument 
                reserved by this proclamation represent the smallest 
                area compatible with the proper care and management of 
                the objects of historic interest identified above, as 
                required by the Antiquities Act; and

[[Page 67825]]

                WHEREAS, it is in the public interest to preserve and 
                protect the objects of historic interest associated 
                with the Springfield 1908 Race Riot;

                NOW, THEREFORE, I, JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR., President of 
                the United States of America, by the authority vested 
                in me by section 320301 of title 54, United States 
                Code, hereby proclaim the objects identified above that 
                are situated upon lands and interests in lands owned or 
                controlled by the Federal Government to be part of the 
                Springfield 1908 Race Riot National Monument (monument) 
                and, for the purpose of protecting those objects, 
                reserve as part thereof all lands and interests in 
                lands owned or controlled by the Government of the 
                United States within the boundaries described on the 
                accompanying map, which is attached to and forms a part 
                of this proclamation. The reserved Federal lands and 
                interests in lands within the monument's boundaries 
                encompass approximately 1.57 acres. The boundaries 
                described on the accompanying map are confined to the 
                smallest area compatible with the proper care and 
                management of the objects to be protected.

                All Federal lands and interests in lands within the 
                boundaries of the monument are hereby appropriated and 
                withdrawn from all forms of entry, location, selection, 
                sale, leasing, or other disposition under the public 
                land laws, including withdrawal from location, entry, 
                and patent under the mining laws, and from disposition 
                under all laws relating to mineral and geothermal 
                leasing.

                The establishment of the monument is subject to valid 
                existing rights. If the Federal Government acquires any 
                lands or interests in lands not owned or controlled by 
                the Federal Government within the boundaries described 
                on the accompanying map, such lands and interests in 
                lands shall be reserved as part of the monument, and 
                objects of the type identified above that are situated 
                upon those lands and interests in lands shall be part 
                of the monument, upon acquisition of ownership or 
                control by the Federal Government.

                The Secretary of the Interior shall manage the monument 
                through the National Park Service, pursuant to 
                applicable legal authorities and consistent with the 
                purposes and provisions of this proclamation. For the 
                purpose of preserving, interpreting, and enhancing the 
                public understanding and appreciation of the monument, 
                the Secretary of the Interior, through the National 
                Park Service, shall prepare a management plan for the 
                monument. The management plan shall ensure that the 
                monument fulfills the following purposes for the 
                benefit of present and future generations: (1) to 
                preserve the historic and cultural resources within the 
                boundaries of the monument; (2) to interpret the story 
                of the Springfield 1908 Race Riot and its significance 
                to the history of racial violence that occurred across 
                the Nation; and (3) to commemorate the history of the 
                Civil Rights Movement and civic leaders' work to build 
                transformative organizations, including the NAACP. The 
                National Park Service shall develop the management plan 
                in consultation with local communities, organizations, 
                and the general public to set forth the desired 
                relationship of the monument to and support for other 
                sites evaluated in the Springfield Race Riot Special 
                Resource Study such as the Badlands Riot Area, the 
                Levee Riot Area, the Sangamon County Courthouse/Old 
                State Capitol, Firehouse No. 5, the home of Mabel 
                Hallam, Kate Howard's Boarding House, the site of Scott 
                Burton's lynching, the site of William Donnegan's 
                lynching, the Illinois Executive Mansion, Camp Lincoln, 
                St. John's Hospital, and the gravesites of Scott Burton 
                and William Donnegan in Oak Ridge Cemetery.

                The National Park Service shall consult with 
                appropriate Federal, State, and local agencies and 
                nongovernmental organizations in planning for 
                interpretation, appropriate commemorative design, and 
                visitor access and services at the monument.

                The National Park Service is directed, as appropriate, 
                to use applicable authorities to seek to enter into 
                agreements with other entities to address

[[Page 67826]]

                common interests and promote management efficiencies, 
                including the provision of visitor services, 
                interpretation and education, establishment and care of 
                museum collections, and commemoration and preservation 
                of historic objects. These entities may include the 
                Lincoln Presidential Foundation, the NAACP, the 
                Springfield and Central Illinois African American 
                History Museum, and the American Civil Liberties Union.

                Nothing in this proclamation shall be deemed to revoke 
                any existing withdrawal, reservation, or appropriation; 
                however, the monument shall be the dominant 
                reservation.

                Warning is hereby given to all unauthorized persons not 
                to appropriate, injure, destroy, or remove any feature 
                of the monument and not to locate or settle upon any of 
                the lands thereof.

                If any provision of this proclamation, including its 
                application to a particular parcel of land, is held to 
                be invalid, the remainder of this proclamation and its 
                application to other parcels of land shall not be 
                affected thereby.

                IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this 
                sixteenth day of August, in the year of our Lord two 
                thousand twenty-four, and of the Independence of the 
                United States of America the two hundred and forty-
                ninth.
                
                
                    (Presidential Sig.)

Billing code 3395-F4-P



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[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TD22AU24.004


[FR Doc. 2024-18999
Filed 8-21-24; 8:45 am]
Billing code 4310-10-C