I started my website JustOneBadCentury.com in 2008, on the 100th anniversary of the Cubs last World Series victory. One of the features I did on the site was "This Week in 1908". It was my way of putting that 100 years in perspective. In so doing, I discovered a lot of really fascinating historical stories, and a few that were quite disturbing. This one fits the latter category...
August 14, 1908
In the midst of the Cubs final championship season, a horrible race riot broke out in Springfield Illinois. Before the race riots were over, forty homes were burned to the ground, 24 businesses were destroyed, and seven people were dead: two black people (lynched by the angry mob) and five white people (accidentally killed during the riot).
It was sparked by a charge of rape (a white woman claimed she was raped by a black man). The scene was so ugly that the Governor of Illinois, Charles Dineen, had to call in the state militia to quell the violence. It didn’t work. At it’s peak, the mob was composed of 12,000 people.
107 people were eventually indicted for their roles in this ugly night, but only one was convicted…and he was convicted of stealing a saber from a guard. The woman who made the rape claim that started this whole thing later admitted that she made it up. The rape never occurred.
As a result of this night, a meeting was held in New York City to discuss the national problem of racial intolerance. This incident was one of 89 confirmed lynchings in America in 1908, and reasonable Americans were appalled. That meeting in New York eventually led to the creation of the NAACP.
While baseball wasn’t directly involved in this gruesome event, there was one shameful tie-in. On his way to Chicago to play the Cubs (a few weeks later), New York Giants manager John McGraw stopped in Springfield. He called the lynchings “so called outrages” and the townspeople gave him a section of the rope used in the lynching as a souvenir.
He took it on the road with the Giants as a good luck charm to replace the rabbit’s foot he had been using.
Yes, 1908 was a very long time ago.
