1908

In Abraham Lincoln's hometown of Springfield, Illinois, a white mob of thousands attacked Black residents over two days. Two Black men were lynched, six more were killed, and 2,000 Black residents fled the city. The mob destroyed businesses and homes in the Black commercial district. The event shocked Northern white liberals; journalist William English Walling wrote an article asking 'who will stand for the Negro?' that directly led Mary White Ovington, Oswald Garrison Villard, and others to organize a founding conference in 1909 that became the NAACP.

Alonzo Bailey, a Black Alabama farm laborer, was arrested for breach of contract after accepting a $15 advance and leaving before his year of labor was complete. Under Alabama law, leaving work after taking an advance was presumptive evidence of intent to defraud — a crime. The NAACP and Department of Justice challenged the statute. In Bailey v. Alabama (1911), the Supreme Court struck down the law as a violation of the 13th Amendment's prohibition on involuntary servitude. The case struck at the legal infrastructure of peonage that trapped hundreds of thousands of Black workers.

Alonzo Bailey, a Black Alabama farm laborer, was arrested for breach of contract after accepting a $15 advance and leaving before his year of labor was complete. Under Alabama law, this was presumptive fraud. The NAACP challenged the statute. In Bailey v. Alabama (1911), the Supreme Court struck down the law as a violation of the 13th Amendment's prohibition on involuntary servitude, striking at the legal infrastructure of peonage.

Jack Johnson became the first Black heavyweight boxing champion on December 26, 1908. When he defeated 'Great White Hope' Jim Jeffries on July 4, 1910, white riots broke out in over 25 cities, killing at least 20 Black Americans. Congress passed legislation banning the interstate transport of boxing fight films specifically to prevent Black Americans from seeing Johnson defeat white opponents.

Richard Wright, born September 4, 1908, on a plantation near Natchez, Mississippi, would document in 'Black Boy' (1945) the psychological terror of growing up Black in the Jim Crow South — constant awareness of the threat of white violence, the performance of submission required for survival, the impossibility of ambition, the denial of education, and the system's crushing of human potential. His memoir became one of the most powerful first-person testimonies to what Jim Crow meant in practice for a child growing up in the 1910s.

Violence in Lincoln's hometown spurs the founding of the NAACP.