In August 1908, mobs of white residents tore through Illinois'
capital city under the pretext of meting out judgment against
two jailed Black men. After authorities secretly moved the
prisoners to another lockup miles away, the mob took out its
anger on the city's Black population.
The riot fueled the formation of the influential civil rights
organization, the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People (NAACP), in 1909.
A ceremony held on Friday in the Oval Office featured civil
rights leaders and community leaders from Springfield, which is
also former President Abraham Lincoln's hometown.
"We've made a lot of progress but we can't never stop," Biden
said during the event, adding that it was important for people
to remember what had happened.
The move came amid efforts, Biden said, to "erase" the country's
history, which serves as a warning to Americans about the risks
"if we don't fight for this democracy." Books dealing with race
issues have been a target for book bans sought by conservative
advocacy groups.
"The new national monument will tell the story of a horrific
attack by a white mob on a Black community that was
representative of the racism, intimidation, and violence that
Black Americans experienced across the country," the White House
said in a statement.
The event comes a few weeks after the fatal July shooting of
Sonya Massey, a 36-year-old Black woman, by a white sheriff's
deputy in her Springfield home after she called 911 for help.
Massey's death has reignited the debate over police brutality
against Black Americans four years after the murder of George
Floyd by the police in Minneapolis, which led to protests over
racial inequality.
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 said the
legacy of racist violence and white supremacy still resonates.
The same month, he and Vice President Kamala Harris, the
Democratic candidate for the Nov. 5 election, signed a bill into
law to make June 19 a federal holiday commemorating the
emancipation of enslaved Black Americans.
(Reporting by Nandita Bose and Trevor Hunnicutt in Washington;
additional reporting by Stephanie Kelly, Editing by Jamie Freed
and Deepa Babington)
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