How the 1908 Race Riot led to the NAACP

We commonly hear that the terrible Springfield race riot of 1908 led to the creation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, but not much is generally known about how that happened. Information from the national NAACP, the Sangamon Valley Collection at Lincoln Library and the Sangamon County Historical Society help put the pieces together.

On Aug. 14-15, 1908, mobs and demonstrators destroyed at least 21 Black businesses in Springfield and burned the homes of more than 40 families. Among those killed during the riot was William Donnegan, a prominent elderly Black cobbler and real estate investor who was lynched across from his house at Spring and Edwards streets.

The day after Donnegan was dragged from his home, an out-of-town journalist named William English Walling came to Springfield and interviewed many local people. He published an article, “Race War in the North,” two weeks later in the New York periodical The Independent. Racial violence and lynchings were sadly common in many cities at that time. In 1905, W.E.B. DuBois and a few others had founded the Niagara Movement, a national civil rights organization.

In his article, Walling described Springfield as permeating with race hatred. He concluded that whites in Springfield generally supported the riot because one of its purposes “was confessedly to teach the Negroes their place.” He ended with a passionate call for Americans to rise up to defend and protect the country’s Black population. “Who realizes the seriousness of the situation, and what large and powerful body of citizens is ready to come to their aid?” Walling wrote.

Fortunately, Walling had an audience. One person in New York who read the article was Mary White Ovington, the descendant of an abolitionist, who was also involved in civil rights issues. In the fall of 1908, after hearing Walling give a lecture, she suggested they work together to form an organization on behalf of African Americans.

They met as a small group of white sympathizers in January 1909 in Walling’s apartment and decided that the upcoming 100th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth on Feb. 12 would provide the optimal date to generate support for a new organization.

They invited Black clergymen and others to join their planning group and enlisted the support of Oswald Garrison Villard, grandson of the abolitionist Willam Lloyd Garrison and editor of the New York Evening Post. They developed a “call” for a major conference on Black issues and got 60 people to issue the call on Lincoln’s birthday. That is why Feb. 12, 1909, is considered the NAACP’s founding date.

According to the NAACP, seven of the 60 people backing the call were Black, including W.E.B. DuBois and Ida B. Wells-Barnett. The others were white liberals including Walling, Villard, Ovington and Dr. Henry Moscowitz. Wells-Barnett, a journalist and activist, had moved to Chicago from the South in 1894 and led efforts against lynching and for better housing, educational opportunities and women’s suffrage.

Although their “call” initially received little publicity, the founders continued to meet. They expanded their group, sometimes meeting at the Liberal Club in New York, and made plans for a “National Negro Conference” on May 31 and June 1, 1909, in the Charity Organization Hall in New York. A major goal of that conference was to obliterate the still-popular notion that the Black race was physically and mentally inferior. They relied on credible experts to achieve that goal, and hundreds of delegates agreed that a new national committee to support the Black race was essential.

From this conference emerged the Committee of Forty, which was charged with setting up a national organization. It became the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People later in 1909. That is why it is accurate to say the Springfield race riot led to the formation of the NAACP – from Springfield to meetings in Walling’s apartment in New York, to a call for a major conference on Lincoln’s birthday in 1909, to a formal planning committee and, officially, the NAACP.

The NAACP has been one of the most important civil rights organizations ever since and has had an active Springfield branch for many years.

Ed Wojcicki freelances from Springfield. He has traveled the state with NAACP leaders for eight years to develop and promote the Ten Shared Principles adopted jointly by the NAACP and the Illinois Association of Chiefs of Police.

This article appears in Jan 30 – Feb 5, 2025.