Biden will establish a national monument at the site of the 1908 racial disturbance in Springfield

President Joe Biden will establish a national monument on Friday to commemorate the 1908 race disturbance in Springfield, Illinois, which resulted in the destruction of dozens of Black-owned businesses and residences, the deaths of several individuals, and the injury of hundreds.

Mobs of white residents tore through the capital city of Illinois in August 1908 under the pretext of administering justice to two Black men. The mob directed their ire toward the city’s Black population after the authorities covertly relocated the detainees from the jail to a different facility located several miles away.

The disturbance served as the catalyst for the establishment of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), a significant civil rights organization, in 1909.

During a press briefing with reporters this week, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre announced that the ceremony will take place in the Oval Office on Friday and will be attended by civil rights leaders and community leaders from Springfield, the birthplace of former President Abraham Lincoln.

“The new national monument will tell the story of a horrific attack by a white mob on a Black community that was representative of the racism, intimidation, and violence that Black Americans experienced across the country,” the administration stated in a statement.

The incident occurred a few weeks following the fatal shooting of Sonya Massey, a 36-year-old Black woman, by a white sheriff’s deputy in her Springfield residence in July. Massey had called 911 for assistance.

Four years after the Minneapolis police murdered George Floyd, which sparked protests over racial inequality, Massey’s death has reignited the conversation regarding police brutality against Black Americans.

Biden made history in June 2021 by becoming the first incumbent U.S. president to visit a site in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where a white mob massacred hundreds of Black Americans in 1921. He stated that the legacy of racist violence and white supremacy continues to resonate.

In the same month, he and Vice President Kamala Harris signed a bill into law that designated June 19 as a federal holiday to commemorate the emancipation of enslaved Black Americans.