Biden designates national monument for 1908 Illinois race riot

President Biden on Friday designated a new national monument at the site of the 1908 Springfield, Ill., race riot, a deadly incident that paved the way for the creation of the NAACP.

In remarks from the Oval Office, Biden said the riot “shocked the conscience of the nation.”

The president signed the proclamation flanked by Illinois Sens. Dick Durbin (D) and Tammy Duckworth (D) and Rep. Nikki Budzinski (D), who co-sponsored the bicameral legislation to create the monument that stalled in Congress. Also present were Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, NAACP President Derrick Johnson and White House Council on Environmental Quality Chair Brenda Mallory. Another sponsor of the bill, Rep. Darin LaHood (R-Ill.), was not present.

The riot began Aug. 14, 1908, after a mob of white men learned that two Black men awaiting trial, one on charges of raping a white woman and the other on charges of murdering a white man, had been transferred out of the local jail. Over the next two days, the mob rioted in Springfield’s Black neighborhoods, killing a total of eight Black men. An infant who died of exposure after their family was displaced is often included in the riot’s death toll as well. The riot was a high-profile incident of racist mob violence in a Northern city during a period when such episodes were associated with the Jim Crow South.

Biden took aim at state laws that seek to exclude incidents like the riot from history curricula in his remarks, saying, “I never thought I’d see people try to erase history … it’s so important for our children and grandchildren to understand what happened.”

The monument is the sixth designated under the Biden administration. The president has also expanded the acreage of two California monuments, the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument and the Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument. The Hill confirmed the White House was set to designate the Springfield monument Wednesday.