The Riot that Birthed a Movement
Content Warning: The following article makes reference to incidents of racial violence and terror.
It was August 1908 in Springfield, Illinois. A white woman reported that she had been assaulted by a Black man. Soon after, a similar report was made by another white woman.
William Donegan, a cobbler from Springfield and one of the lynching victims of the 1908 riots
The Springfield police took two African American men, Joe James and George Richardson, into custody for the assaults. News quickly spread throughout Springfield’s white community and not long after, an angry mob had formed with the intent of violently confronting the two men who had been arrested. The anger of the mob boiled over when they learned that James and Richardson had been moved to an undisclosed location for their own safety. As a result, the mob exploded in rage into what would become known as the Springfield Race Riot. They ripped through a Black business district before turning on the homes of a Black neighborhood known as the Badlands, where they burned and destroyed nearly 40 houses. Two Black men were lynched that night. They were Scott Burton, a 56 year old barber who had lived in the Badlands, and William Donegan, an 84 year old cobbler who was married to a white woman. When the acts of racial terror were finished, six people had been shot and killed on top of the two that had been lynched. Additionally, the mob had inflicted hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of damage on homes, businesses, and other property. In the end, the violence had forced approximately 2,000 Black people out of Springfield.
The Springfield Race Riot made Illinois the center of national attention and uproar. It was the last straw for many activists, including prominent white progressives such as Mary White Ovington, Henry Moskowitz, Oswald Garrison Villard, and William English Walling. This group put out a call to all advocates for racial justice to meet and take action against such racially motivated violence. The Springfield Race Riots had been the boiling point for many as around sixty people signed the call these activists had put forth, including the well-known Black activists including sociologist and writer W. E. B. Du Bois, journalist and researcher Ida B. Wells-Barnett, as well as activist Mary Church Terrell who had been one of the first Black women to earn a college degree. This was the start of the NAACP.
Founder of the Niagara Movement and founding member of the NAACP, W.E.B DuBois
This “call” to action became the founding document of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People or the NAACP. The NAACP was formed on February 12, 1909 — the birthday of President Abraham Lincoln — in New York City. As the oldest and largest civil rights organization in the United States, it was formed in response to widespread racial violence and discrimination. From the get go, the anti-lynching movement was central to the NAACP’s agenda, in direct response to the 1908 Springfield Race Riots and other similar attacks on Black Americans. In fact, in 1917 the Association organized a silent march in New York City to protest lynchings and violence against Black people — a march in which 10,000 people ultimately participated. Furthermore, one of the NAACP’s earliest members W. E. B. Du Bois had founded the Niagara Movement in 1905 as a civil rights group dedicated to fostering social and political mobility for African Americans. The Niagara Movement focused on ending segregation and discrimination in unions and courts as well as guaranteeing equal economic and educational opportunities for Black Americans. Being one of the only Black members of the NAACP’s initial leadership, Du Bois brought the goals and mission of the Niagara Movement with him to the Association.
The NAACP additionally worked to secure and uphold the rights laid out in the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution. In other words, they fought to ensure that all Americans, regardless of race, were afforded full citizenship under the law as well as fought to prohibit states from discriminating against voters on the basis of race. For instance, the Association challenged racist voter suppression laws as well as their linked “grandfather clauses.” While the 15th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution prohibited against preventing people from voting due to their race, it did not outlaw other, non-racial restrictions to voting. As a result, many states made it a legal requirement for voters to pass literacy tests or constitutional quizzes to vote. However, these laws included a “grandfather clause” which exempted an individual from these requirements if their ancestors had been able to vote in 1866. Notably, Black Americans were not given the right to vote until 1876 and were thus specifically targeted by this legislation. The NAACP challenged these laws in court, which resulted in the 1915 Supreme Court decision of Guinn v. United States which deemed “grandfather clauses” were unconstitutional.
Organizers of the 1963 March on Washington. Roy Wilkins, who led the NAACP from 1955-1977 is standing the furthest to the right.
However, the NAACP was very different from many other civil rights groups as it worked within the judicial system to achieve its goals. The Association played a pivotal role in the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 60s. One of its key victories was with regards to Brown V. Board of Education, which outlawed segregation in public schools. While the NAACP was often criticized during this time for working too heavily within the system, the Association critically provided legal representation and support for members of other civil rights groups. Not only was the NAACP responsible for bailing many of the Freedom Riders out of jail in the 1960s as they protested Jim Crow Laws but the Association played a central role in planning the March on Washington in 1963, one of the biggest civil rights rallies in US history. Furthermore, the NAACP successfully lobbied for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin and endorsed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which aimed to end racial discrimination in voting.
The NAACP has played and continues to play a huge role in shaping American history and continues to be the nation's oldest, largest, and most widely recognized civil rights organizations. In fact, the Association entered the new century with a massive voter registration campaign which resulted in a million more Black Americans voting in the 2000 presidential election than had voted in 1996. Their advocacy has continued into the 2000s as the Association works to combat racial inequality in employment, education, healthcare, as well as within the criminal justice and legal system. The NAACP has also continued to advocate against the proliferation of Confederate symbols, having done so since the Association called for a boycott of the racist film Birth of a Nation in 1915. In fact, a century after the release of Birth of a Nation, the NAACP joined the fight to take down the Confederate flag from the South Carolina State House following the June 2015 murders of nine black church goers in Charleston, South Carolina.
From the moment of its inception, the mission of the NAACP has been to ensure political, educational, social, and economic equality to eliminate any racial prejudice. As of 2021, the NAACP has 2,200 branches across the United States as the continue to “remain vigilant in its mission until the promise of America is made real for all Americans.”