SPRINGFIELD, IL (WAND) — Springfield community members are calling on President Biden to commemorate the site of 1908 Springfield Race Riots as a national monument.

On Monday, the Department of Interior held a public meeting at Union Baptist Church to discuss the topic. Brenda Mallory, chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, and Shannon Estenoz, Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Fish and Wildlife and Parks, attended the meeting and heard from community leaders as they expressed support for President Biden to use the Antiquities Act to designate a national monument in Springfield.

The Springfield site would be the first national park to tell the history of race riots in the U.S. and would document one of the country’s worst examples of mass racial violence, where a White mob attacked and lynched Black residents of Springfield and burned their homes and businesses within blocks of the former home of Abraham Lincoln.

“Making the site of the 1908 Springfield Race Riot a National Monument will give all Americans the chance to know their history so something so horrible as this will never happen again,” said Ken Page, President, Springfield ACLU.

President and CEO of the Lincoln Presidential Foundation, Erin Mast, said “Establishing the 1908 Springfield Race Riot site as a National Monument is essential for representing our nation’s complex history.”

Mast continued, “The site is a memorial to the lives lost and highlights the event and chapter in our nation’s history that led to the founding of the NAACP. The decision to establish the NAACP on Abraham Lincoln’s birthday in 1909 powerfully underscored the enduring connections between Lincoln’s legacy and the ongoing struggle for equality. The site and its story must be preserved for future generations.”

Back in August of 2020, an earlier meeting was held by the National Park Service as part of a Congressionally directed special resource study.

The study, completed in June 2023, received comments from more than 5,400 Black church leaders, conservationists and religious organizations in support of national monument designation.

“The creation of a Springfield 1908 Race Riot remembrance and National Monument to many here in Springfield is a long overdue dream,” said James Bass, 1st Vice President of the Springfield Branch of the NAACP.

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