The History They Didn't Teach Us | The Birth of the NAACP

🎙️ Episode 20

The History They Didn't Teach Us | The Birth of the NAACP

What really happened in Springfield, Illinois, in 1908?

How did one of the darkest moments in American history lead to the birth of the NAACP?

And why does that history still matter today?

In this episode of Our Truth. Our History. Our Story., Rita Coburn travels to Springfield, Illinois, to explore the events surrounding the 1908 Springfield Race Riot, the birth of the NAACP, and the enduring legacy of W.E.B. Du Bois. Along the way, she reflects on hearing Nikole Hannah-Jones speak at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum and examines why journalists, historians, and truth tellers remain essential to our democracy.

History isn't simply about the past.

It's about the choices we make today, the stories we choose to tell, and the future we're building together.

In This Episode

• The 1908 Springfield Race Riot and why it changed America
• How the violence in Springfield led to the birth of the NAACP
• W.E.B. Du Bois and the creation of The Crisis magazine
• Why Springfield remains one of the most important civil rights landmarks in American history
• Rita's visit to the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum
• Reflections after hearing Nikole Hannah-Jones speak about Juneteenth and American history
• Why supporting journalists, historians, and independent voices matters
• How history helps us understand our present and shape our future

Featured People

• W.E.B. Du Bois
• Ida B. Wells
• Nikole Hannah-Jones
• Abraham Lincoln

Featured Locations

• Springfield, Illinois
• Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum
• Historic sites of the 1908 Springfield Race Riot

Books Mentioned

• The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois
• Black Reconstruction in America by W.E.B. Du Bois
• The 1619 Project by Nikole Hannah-Jones

Links & Resources

📺 Watch This Episode
https://youtu.be/54Hclvda674

🎙 Our Truth. Our History. Our Story Podcast
https://www.ritacoburn.com/ths-podcast

🎬 W.E.B. Du Bois: Rebel With a Cause
https://www.ritacoburn.com/web-du-bois

▶️ Watch the Official Trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kMsik6rDQM&rco=1

📚 Nikole Hannah-Jones
https://www.nikolehannahjones.com/

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Join the Conversation

What part of American history do you think we weren't taught, and why does it matter today?

History belongs to all of us.

And what we do with that history will shape the generations that follow.

I'm Rita Coburn.

Thanks for listening to Our Truth. Our History. Our Story.

🎬 About the Series

Our Truth, Our History, Our Story (Our THS) explores the people, ideas, and cultural forces shaping Black history and storytelling. Hosted by award-winning filmmaker Rita Coburn, the series features conversations and reflections that connect our past to the present while inspiring a deeper understanding of our shared humanity.

👥 Production Credits

Host: Rita Coburn

Executive Producer: Andrew T. Carr

Producers: Christine Coburn Whack, H. Lee Whack

Produced by RCW Media Productions, Inc.

© 2026 RCW Media Productions, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome again to Our Truth, Our History, Our Story. We are at a time in history that's really life-changing. All the controversy and conversations surrounding the 250th anniversary of this country have brought to light more empowered people, more truthful conversations, and more honest discussions about where we really are as a country. And all of that's good and necessary. It's also brought the angst of white supremac views to the forefront of some of these conversations. But it is only through those facing those multiple realities and all of the difficult conversations that we will have any hope of getting to the truth of who we are as a country. People are questioning, rewriting, reimagining history written by the privilege to form a story around a history that truthfully reflects a we the people history. As a resident of Illinois, Springfield is our capital, even though we're mostly identified with the big city of Chicago. My husband and I took a trip to Springfield recently because Nicole Hannah Jones, the journalist, was speaking at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum. What's significant about that is, of course, we know Lincoln for freeing the enslaved, but history is much more complicated than the simple version many of us learned in school. School history was cleaned up. It was pristine. But the Civil War, emancipation, the economics and politics and balance of power between the North and South were all really intertwined. And there's a lot to unpack in terms of why Lincoln did what he did in freeing the enslaved. And it's not just a pretty picture that fits neatly into the history books. I'll let you unpack that with some of your own reading. But what I really want to say is this Springfield was really indicative of a reckoning of what was going on in this country in 1908, just barely a little bit more than a hundred years ago. There was a massacre and a race riot in Springfield that shook the nation. And it shook the nation because extreme violence, malicious violence, hanging, lynching, and all of that seemed to be confined to the South. And much less of that was heard about in the North. But this riot turned that idea on its head. The racial terror had jumped the Mason-Dixon line, and appalled, but faced with those facts, a group of wealthy white liberals decided that what had happened was intolerable. Once they made that decision, things began to change. Ida B. Wells, black leaders, W.E.B. Du Bois, and other black leaders were already fighting for justice. But the reality was this: when one group has the power and another group does not, the group with the power has to be willing to share it, to take a risk. And these people had amassed more education, law firms, social and political, financial connections that we clearly did not have. And instead of choosing greed and power, they made a we the people choice. Those people had an abolitionist spirit. They shared their resources and stood alongside black leaders in the fight for justice. The horror of Springfield became one of the major catalysts that led to the founding of the NAACP, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. W.E.B. Du Bois was the only black founding member, and he started the Crisis Magazine. We have the internet now, but at that particular point, it was the Black Twitter. It was the place to find out who, what, where, why, and how something was happening that was about black people not only in this nation but worldwide at the time. So those Springfield riots caused black people and many families to leave in droves, but it also spawned a movement. And that's what we need now. The Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum is really at the cross sections of where all of that happened. So you'll see historical markers that talk about the riot. And standing there looking at those markers made that history feel very real to me. History isn't something we just imagine. It happened. And sometimes when you stand where it happened, walk those streets, read those markers, and let the place speak for itself, you find that history becomes more real for you. So come with me. Let's walk through Springfield, not just the capital of Illinois, but a place where one of the darkest times of our history really took place. And before we continue this conversation, I want you to see some of what I saw and understand why Springfield still matters today. Black people were hung from lampposts on the streets, and their businesses were destroyed. And right here, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which actually came about after these racist gestures and horrors took place, some whites believed in racial parity and they joined with blacks. And W.E.B. Du Bois became the first black person on the board for the NAACP, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. And this sign here symbolizes what happened. These men asked for just the same thing: fairness and fairness only. This so far as is in my power, they and all others shall have Abraham Lincoln, 16th president of the United States. On this side, it commemorates the Springfield, Illinois race riots, 1908. And on the other side, I want to read some of the things there. City of Springfield, Historical Events Memorial Committee, 1908 race riot walking tour. That was done by Mayor Langfeld and Salma Ferry Chairfurst for 7th and Jefferson Streets. This was the old county jail site. You see a president making a decision that the world is going to be fairer. And that can still happen. And what's really important here is that on August 14th, 1908, a mob gathered at the jail and demanded the release of George Richardson and Joe James, two black prisoners that hadn't been tried given a fair trial or anything. There were no proven facts that Richardson was accused of raping Mabel Halem, a white woman, and James was accused of the murder of Clergy Ballard, a white man. There was a white sheriff that transported the prisoners to Bloomington, Illinois with the help of another white man who was a local restaurant owner. They were trying to make sure that these people weren't harmed. But when these people, who had not been given any kind of trial, were taken away, the whites that were left, some of them, developed an assatiable bloodlust. Their evil came to the forefront of their minds, and they hung innocent people who had nothing to do with this on lampposts. In rage and jealousy, they destroyed black businesses for an unproven rape and murder. These white people at this point in history were so angry that they didn't look for just cause. They just grabbed people who had nothing to do with any of that. They didn't look to the courts, they took justice in their own hands. Over eight people were killed, and people began to leave Springfield and droves. You'll find that story in part in W. E. B. Du Bois Rebel with a cause. And then you'll have to think about what does that tell you? It tells me that we really need a lawful society, and that each one of us at this point can't even afford to be afraid of what's happening around us. We have to stand up for democracy and our rights. This is in 1908, but it is a dark moment in history, and it becomes darker if we don't do anything about it. Last night we heard Nicole Hannah Jones right here across the street at the presidential library that was built in 2004. Right on this spot. And I think that's indicative of what happened when we build this library here. And we have people come in, like Nicole Hannah Jones came in to talk about Juneteenth. We knew that a different history was being made for her to even have the opportunity to speak there. And she talked about the need for Juneteenth and the need to celebrate our freedoms and how we need to continue to demand those freedoms. The 16th 19 Project changed the game. That book made so many people enraged, and yet it brought a truth. And whenever we can hear our journalists, we need to support them. Black churches, black people, white people, everybody needs to support the telling of a history. Indeed, the audience was primarily white. We need that free press. The press has journalists. The journalists are documenting what will become history. If we don't have them, we lose that. Even now, a lot of stations down here in Springfield aren't as big as they used to be. And all over, journalists are literally under attack. We've heard them being called names. We've heard them not given the space to report. I will tell you that the 1619 project is really something that you need to take time to read. And you may have to take it in bites because the reading is tough. It's really very harsh, but it has receipts. It has journalists proving what they're talking about. After listening to Nicole Hannah-Jones drop so much knowledge, along with questions from the audience, we pause to ask ourselves, how far away are we from 1908? And how can we make sure that never happens again? It's not a far-fetched question. You look at January 6th, other assaults on our democracy, some of the marching that took place over the July 4th holiday look very reminiscent of a time past of racist people out marching. I think you know what I mean. How do we bring some order out of this chaos? So when journalists like Nicole Hannah-Jones, Eddie Glaude, others, you have your favorite journalists, when they come to town, listen to them, buy their books. When they launch a Substack, subscribe. Of all the subscriptions we have today, supporting thoughtful journalism and historians, it's going to be really an important investment that we can make. We need these truth tellers. One narrative is that we can become complacent, hopeless, and simply look away and do what we do. But we really need to be aware and have the journalists be like a North Star pointing us toward what's happening. And we also need to encourage and support and join with white people and other people that want to do the right thing. When they want to march and protest and write checks and use their privilege to make a difference, we need to welcome that because this moment is just that serious. And you're not going to get it all from the nightly news. And you're not going to get it all from scrolling. I also believe W.E.B. Du Bois Rebel with the Cause has helped push the conversation forward. After our documentary premiered WEB Du Bois with his Souls of Black Folks with Black Reconstruction, these things started to trend. And I believe people of all races are awakening and asking questions and reading work and wanting more history. It's digging through that history that we get to know the truth. And from that truth, we can decide what kind of country we're willing to build, what we're willing to confront, and what we refuse to repeat. Not shrinking. As a writer, director, and producer of W.E.B. Du Bois Rebel with the Cause, I'm also the co-director and producer of Maya Angelo and Still I Rise, and director and producer of Marianne Anderson, The Whole World in Her Hands. My documentaries have primarily pushed forward Black history and the stories that we need to know, not simply to understand the past, but to arm ourselves with knowledge to navigate this cultural moment and build a better future. Because we went to hear Nicole Hanna-Jones speak, my husband and I listened to the 1619 project on Audible during our drive to Springfield. And I especially want to point out to you chapter two. I especially want to point out the chapter on women. It's a hard listen. It's literally about how black women were treated in 1619 at the beginning of our history. And you can't afford to clutch your pearls on this one. It documents how black women were raped in public, exploited in countless ways, and stripped of their humanity. What I appreciated most was that there were facts, there were receipts, and it's not simply somebody's opinion. It is history without a chaser. It is straight up and it's difficult to listen to. But you gotta hang in there. I couldn't help but think about how fear has so often fueled oppression, that fear that caused white men to kill innocent black people in the streets just because they couldn't get to black people they wanted to kill. And because we still wear our skin colors a uniform, because we continue also to find agency, resilience, and power, and our numbers are growing and our ability to survive, people want to exploit that. And that exploitation didn't start or end with slavery on American soil or the emancipation proclamation. From the earliest days of European colonization, systems were deliberately constructed to dehumanize and justify enslavement. Colonizers promoted and normalized false beliefs that Africans and African Americans were inherently inferior to rationalize the violence, forced labor, and generational trauma. And those ideas were codified into laws, reinforced through religions and pseudoscience, embedded into the very foundation of American society, shaping attitudes and systems that would persist long after slavery was abolished for whites, for blacks and all people, even after emancipation, those same false hierarchies were repackaged through movements like eugenics, which claim scientific legitimacy while promoting the idea that black people were biologically inferior, unfit. It was used to justify segregation, forced sterilizations, and policies that control and diminish black life. Those same ideas still echo today through white privilege violence and demeaning language we still hear, and through the attempt to make black women, men and children shrink. We've witnessed this recently, black women being called out of our names, having our intelligence questioned, our identities challenged, and even being referred to as men, all in an effort to diminish us. Instead, we the people continue to use our agency, our voices, our education, our creativity, and our energy for the good of our families, ourselves, communities, and to build this larger culture. And just as those people decided enough was enough and came together to create the NAACP, we continue to welcome people of every race who are willing to stand with us so that together we can build a better truth, a better history, and ultimately a better story. Because history doesn't belong to one race, one political party, or one generation, and no one person, no one group gets to tell it. It belongs to all of us. And what we do with that history will shape the future and it will shape generations to come. So remember this. I'm Rita Coburn, and thanks for listening to our truth, our history, our story.