Joe James, a Black man, was asleep under a tree when he was grabbed, beaten and then arrested for the murder of a white man in Springfield, Illinois.
Before he was put on trial and later executed, a white mob seeking vengeance for the crime James was accused of committing took out its hate and anger on other Black people in the state capital.The 1908 race riot left Black-owned businesses and homes looted and burned. At least two other Black men were lynched weeks before an all-white jury convened in the aftermath of the violence found James guilty, according to legal teams petitioning for a pardon 114 years after the fact.
The review board then could make a recommendation for pardon to Gov. J.B. Pritzker. If successful, the posthumous action would be the third such pardon in Illinois over the past decade and follow recent ones elsewhere in the U.S. Threats from white residents to both men prompted authorities to move them to a jail outside Sangamon County. Incensed, the white mob took out its judgment on the town’s Black residents.
James appeared before a Sangamon County jury after a judge refused to move the trial to another county. He “was convicted on the basis of circumstantial evidence,” attorneys seeking the pardon said in a release. In 2020, the site of the riot near downtown Springfield was added to the National Park Service’s African American Civil Rights Network.In 2014, then-Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn pardoned three white abolitionists convicted of helping runaway slaves in the 1840s. Five years later, Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner pardoned Grover Thompson, a Black man who was wrongfully convicted of murdering a white woman in 1981.
“It was so sad to know he was only 16 and they didn’t care as long as they convicted someone,” Perdue told The Associated Press. “He was a Black kid. They convicted a kid they knew did not do this.”
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