United States – On Friday, President Joe Biden is scheduled to formally designate a national monument to the Springfield, Illinois, 1908 race riots where several people were killed, hundreds more injured, and scores of Black-owned businesses and homes burnt down.
Roots of the 1908 Race Riot
In August 1908, groups of white persons rampaged through the capital city of Illinois under the guise of seeking justice for two black men. The frustrated mob then directed their rage toward the Black residents of the city after the authorities transferred the prisoners to a new lockup site a distance away from the jail in the dead of night, as reported by Reuters.
The riot led in formation of more notable civil right organization, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909.
A Monument to Remember
Speaking with reporters this week, Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, announced that the event will occur on Friday and will take place in the Oval Office, with the participation of civil rights advocates and community representatives from Springfield, the town that is famously associated with the former President Abraham Lincoln.
“The new national monument will capture a story of a vicious attack on a Black community by whites that depicts racism, intimidation and violence Black Americans had to endure across the country,” said the White House.
The event occurs a few weeks after the fatal shooting of 36-year-old Black woman, Sonya Massey, by a White sheriff’s deputy in her Springfield home after she called the police for assistance in July this year.
The death of Massey has brought back the issue of police brutality in the black community four years after the death of George Floyd by the police in Minneapolis, which triggered protests on matters of race.
In June 2021, Biden became the first sitting U. S. president to visit a site in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where hundreds of Black Americans were massacred by a white mob in 1921, and he said the legacy of racist violence and white supremacy still exists today, as reported by Reuters.
The same month, he and vice president Kamala Harris also signed a bill into law, the holiday for which is June 19, celebrated to commemorate the emancipation of Black People from slavery.