Xposted from GD, because I think it's worth noting:

[Critters2]

100th Anniversary of the Springfield Riot.

The Springfield Race Riot rocked Springfield, IL 100 years ago on August 14. A horrible event. Helped to give rise to the NAACP.

http://www.lib.niu.edu/1996/iht329622.html

It's important that we remember this and events like it.

[Fire Walk With Me]

1. That is heartbreaking.

What a crime that nearly 100 years later, (professional) thugs of the same sort managed to do to New Orleans what the rioters wanted to do to Chicago. What again was Barbara Bush's quote regarding how lucky the displaced were to be living in the sports arena?

"Apparently some whites thought that those blacks who had not been frightened away by the violence might be starved out of town if they lost their jobs and if white shop owners refused to sell them food."

I still see this sort of behaviour in people today. It is also the result of stifling ignorance and extreme selfishness.

[Critters2]

2. It is heartbreaking. And it was not talked about for a long time.

Some of my cousins grew up in Springfield (not Chicago, btw). We spent a lot of time there when I was growing up. They had a swim pool, so we'd actually spend the hottest part of the summer there several years, and just live in the pool. But in all that time in Springfield, I never heard a word about the riot. I only learned about them when a friend began to serve a church in Virden, about 20 miles south of Springfield. She learned about the Virden Mine War, (http://www.csj.net/~mkwoods/Virden.htm) and then went from there to an interest in the Springfield Riot. Some historians see the two events as closely related, because many of the African American miners who were forced out of Virden (after being brought there as strikebreakers, because they desperately needed the work) settled in the "Badlands" neighborhood of Springfield, where the worst of the rioting happened.

Until my colleague there began talking about the riots, I knew not a thing. It is especially sad that it happened in Lincoln's hometown.

It's also where Barack Obama made his announcement of candidacy. A black man announcing for the presidency in the city where these awful riots took place.

We're making some progress. Slowly but surely.

[Fire Walk With Me]

3. Kick.