Mob Violence Springfield Aug - 08 [caption title]

[Springfield, Il, 1908. Very good.. Real photo postcard, 3.5 x 5.5 inches, with caption title printed in the negative at top left, and manuscript annotations on both sides. Minor edge and surface wear. A striking visual record capturing the scene of a "Negro home" razed to the ground during the 1908 Springfield Race Riot in Illinois. The image shows the smoldering ruins of a urban home piled around a pair of narrow brick chimneys. A former owner of the postcard who identifies himself only as "Eli" has written captions on each side. Beneath the image area, he writes, "Negro home destroyed at time of Race Riot," and on the verso has written, "Many negro (truncated) homes and places of business were either burned or destroyed." The 1908 Springfield Race Riot began like most others -- with an African American man falsely accused of sexually assaulting a white woman (the accuser would later publicly recant her allegation). The riot developed after the Springfield sheriff removed the accused African American prisoner and another Black suspected of another crime from the jail and sent them to Bloomington, Illinois in an attempt to prevent mob violence. It didn't work. When the local white population heard the accused had been spirited away without their knowledge, they raged for two days. In the process, this white mob comprised of the "best citizens" of Abraham Lincoln's hometown lynched two African American men, injured scores of others, and destroyed about two dozen businesses and three or four dozen homes. The event directly contributed to the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Contemporary photographic relics of the event are exceedingly rare. (Inventory #: 5497)