Springfield (Ill.) Race Riot (August 14-15, 1908)
The spark: In mid-August 1908, the white population of Springfield, Illinois, angered by two reports that white women had been assaulted by Black men, grew into a mob, moving across the countryside lynching Blacks and burning their homes, according to the website blackpast.org. Some Springfield Blacks fought back in self-defense, firing upon the mob. Death toll: 6 Black people were shot and killed, two were lynched.
Chicago Race Riots (July 27-August 3, 1919)
The spark: When an African-American teenager drowned in Lake Michigan after violating the unofficial segregation of Chicago’s beaches and being stoned by a group of white youths, his death, and the police’s refusal to arrest the white man whom eyewitnesses identified as causing it, sparked a week of rioting between gangs of Black and white Chicagoans on the South Side. Death toll: 23 African-Americans and 15 whites were killed; more than 525 were injured, two-thirds of them black. About a thousand Chicagoans, mostly African-Americans, were left homeless.
