(RACE RIOTS) Real Photo Post Card of the aftermath of the Sp

Sale 2204 - Lot 366

Price Realized: $ 480

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 400 - $ 600

(RACE RIOTS.) Real Photo Post Card of the aftermath of the Springfield, Illinois race riots of 1908. Silver print, 3-3/8x5-1/2 inches. Springfield, Illinois, 1908

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The front of the "White Dental Parlors" which had been entirely destroyed during the violent riot. On the evening of August 14,1908, a race "war" broke out in the Illinois capital of Springfield. Angry over reports that a black man had sexually assaulted a white woman, a white mob wanted to take a recently arrested suspect from the city jail and kill him. In the early hours of the violence, as many as five thousand white Springfield residents were present, mostly as spectators. Later in the day, the rioters methodically destroyed a small black business district downtown, breaking windows and doors, stealing or destroying merchandise, and wrecking furniture and equipment. The mob then attacked and set fire to a poor black neighborhood called the Badlands. Most blacks had fled the city, but as the mob swept through the area, they captured and lynched a black barber, Scott Burton, who had stayed behind to protect his home.