Terry Blackhawk: A Springfield Ghazal

The scrapbook’s burnt Sienna dust concealed
my Grandpa Pete’s “Glory Days” in Illinois, in Springfield.

Dance cards, 4×4 relay scores, state championship headlines.
But no clippings about a riot in Springfield.

On August 14, 1908, a white woman, Mabel Haddam,
lied about being raped by a Black man in Springfield.

The sheriff spirited George Richardson, the accused, out of jail,
hoping to thwart a swelling mob that night in Springfield.

My grandfather “witnessed a lynching” my father recalled,
but “expressed no shame” about what he’d seen in Springfield.

“Only a boy,” my mother maintained, when my father
began to tell about his father that night in Springfield.

But the scrapbook gives the date, the lie.
Pete had been eighteen, a young man in Springfield.

The mob torched the upscale restaurant of Harry Loper
who loaned his car for the escape from Springfield.

But nothing saved the barber who fought back, the cobbler
pulled from his home—both lynched in Springfield.

A storm troubles my dreams, a whirling tornado of planks and slats,
charred like the houses of Black families in Springfield.

My grandfather always wore white starched shirts,
the same as in photos of the mob in Springfield.

Scott Burton, the barber, William Dunnegan, the cobbler—
did my grandfather watch you die in Springfield?

“Don’t tell Terry,” my mother said, draping me
in the shame and the silence of Springfield.

Daughter, yes, you have shed that spell and now must bear/share
the news, over one hundred years ago, from Springfield.
~~

Author’s Note: Starting on August 14, 1908, a white mob attacked and lynched Black people and burned their homes in Springfield, Illinois, within blocks of the former home of Abraham Lincoln.  After nearly three days of violence, the state militia helped to restore order and approximately 150 participants were arrested. However, only one was ever convicted of a crime. As one of the country’s worst examples of mass racial violence, the Springfield Race Riot generated outrage which led to the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) on Lincoln’s birthday in 1909. From Something So Horrible: The Springfield Race Riot of 1908, by Carole Merritt, a 79-page book published as part of an exhibit at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library in 2008. 

On August 16, 2024, President Joe Biden designated a national monument at the site, to be managed by the National Park Service. Per the website of the U.S. Department of the Interior, where a page on the riot had beenadded in 2020, “any previously issued diversity, equity, inclusion or gender-related guidance on this webpage should be considered rescinded.”  The website of the Springfield, IL NAACP also gives a thorough history. 

~~~~

Copyright 2018 Terry Blackhawk. First published in Naugatuck River Review.

Terry Blackhawk is a teacher and poet. Her many books include One Less River (Mayapple Press, 2019).