City paid a steep price for the riot

Within 10 days after the race riot broke out, victims began filing claims with the Springfield City Council to be reimbursed for deaths, injuries and damages to homes, businesses and property.

A law in place at the time said the city was responsible for reimbursing residents for their losses. Mayor Roy Reece appointed a special investigating committee to review all the claims and adjust them if needed. The committee included the city comptroller, city engineer, city attorney and three aldermen.

The first set of claims totaled $16,000, including one from Harry Loper for $14,569.25. He sought $5,144 for a bar, $3,292 for his restaurant and $6,133.25 for his car, all of which were destroyed by the mob. He told the city council he estimated the claim was for three-fourths of what the property actually was worth.

Among the dozens of additional claims were ones by:

* The Inter-State Telephone company for damaged phones and lines in places destroyed by the mob
* Andrew Gordon, a shoe shop owner later held on suspicion of shooting William Bowe during the Friday-night rioting, who sought $1,630 for the loss of his entire stock of 225 pairs of new shoes and 1,000 pairs of second-hand shoes
* Frank Schuckardt, a saloon owner who wanted to be paid $440.50 for the loss of cards, dice and other items
* A waiter at Loper's who sought $33.25 for shoes, jackets and shirts that were taken by rioters
* Sam Gordon, a spectacle vendor who had a small stand in front of Loper's that was destroyed
* J. Edward Thompson, who sought $1,729 for destroyed grocery stock
* Rollin Sturgis, a Loper's employee, who sought $5,000 for injuries he suffered

Kate Burton sought $3,000 for the death of her husband, barber Scott Burton, who was hanged by the mob. Mary E. Scott, whose husband, Thomas J. Scott, died from gunshot wounds sustained in the riot, sued for $10,000 for her husband's death.

Damage estimates range from $120,000 to $200,000, which would be between $2 million and $3.5 million by today's standards. About 60 homes and businesses were damaged or destroyed.

Within days of the first claims being submitted, city officials said the committee was going to put some of the claims through a "trimming process" before they were paid.

Most of the claims were from black residents whose homes and businesses were destroyed. An Aug. 29, 1908, Illinois State Journal article predicted 200 claims would be filed. They were for as little as $25 for property to $3,000 for survivors of victims who died in the rioting.

The article shed light on irritation by city leaders about claims submitted by black residents.

"Five-dollar patent leather shoes seem to have been a common thing in the 'levee' and 'bad lands' districts. A majority of those who lost shoes and clothing appear to have been well dressed men and women and nothing but the best was included in their wardrobes. In all the claims, no one wore shoes that cost less than $4 and their clothes are valued at from $20 to $40 a suit," the article stated.

The article cited an unnamed city official as saying that, "If poor people lived in these districts, as supposed, it is time for the assessors to make a personal investigation of the schedules filed by residents of the Fourth and Fifth wards."

According to riot researcher Roberta Senechal, the city decided to set aside a portion of its revenues each year so it could gradually pay off riot claims. However, officials eventually had to issue and sell special bonds; nearly six years later, the city still had not retired its indebtedness on the bonds.

In the days following the 1908 race riot, destruction of property and murder, Springfield's middle and upper classes tried to distance themselves from the events of Aug. 14-15.

The Chamber of Commerce and the Springfield Businessmen's Association met and loudly denounced the mob and what it had done, calling for those who looted, destroyed and burned property and murdered two black men to be brought to justice.

Newspaper editorials were quick to say the acts of the mob didn't reflect the feelings of the "real" Springfield, and that no decent residents were members of it.

The Springfield News, a week or so after the riot, said it wasn't a race war and that the riots resulted from "uncontrolled passions of criminal instincts." It said in a headline that the mob was composed of "men who would rob dead in a wreck or pillage while fire burns."

"The inception of the destruction of lives and property in Springfield came from the lawless, indolent and vagrant portion of the community," Major Gen. E.C. Young said in his proclamation announcing the end of military control in Springfield.

William St. John Wines, an assistant state's attorney who prosecuted the murder cases stemming from the riot, said the crimes resulted "not from a race riot but an organized band of hoodlums of which (Abe) Raymer was one."

But at least in the early stages of the riot, when the crowd around Harry Loper's restaurant numbered probably about 5,000, people from all walks of Springfield life were represented.

Eyewitness accounts indicate that most of the crowd there were just spectators, gathering around the excitement as would a crowd at a massive fire.

Surviving accounts also mention that some well-to-do men were caught in the frenzy of the mob and chucked bricks pried up from the street at Loper's windows and even carried souvenirs from the destroyed building.

But Roberta Senechal, whose 1990 book "The Sociogenesis of a Race Riot: Springfield, Illinois in 1908" is the definitive work on the subject, found that "the better element had almost disappeared by the time it (the mob) reached the Badlands." The size of the mob also had diminished considerably.

But Senechal found during her research evidence that the rioters weren't who they were painted to be.

She looked at the names of 190 rioters who were listed in the local newspapers as being arrested or likely to be indicted, and used city directories and census data to examine them.

She also found other rioters among the 53 people taken to hospitals following the riot. Of the 53, all but 11 suffered gunshot wounds, and Senechal said those probably were active rioters, not bystanders, although only two of them were later indicted.

Her analysis debunked some of the misperceptions about the makeup of the mob.

Above all, she said, the riot could be called a working-class riot.

Foreign-born rioters comprised 14.8 percent of the 133 rioters eventually examined, about the same as the foreign-born share of the Springfield population.

More than 80 percent had blue-collar jobs, and semi-skilled and unskilled whites made up more than half the total.

Miners, railroad employees and streetcar workers made up a third of the 133 rioters examined.

Senechal found that the typical rioter was "a young man in his twenties, single, employed in a working-class job and was a native of Illinois." He lived in the working-class north, central and eastern sections of Springfield and had little contact with blacks.