In August 1908, the city of Springfield, Illinois—often celebrated as the hometown of Abraham Lincoln—became the site of one of the most violent race riots in American history. Over the course of just a few days, white mobs rampaged through Black neighborhoods, leaving death, destruction, and lasting trauma in what is now known as the Springfield Riot. At the center of the chaos was George Richardson, a Black man falsely accused of raping a white woman.
George Richardson was a respected Black resident of Springfield, known to be a property owner and someone who had no criminal record. That didn’t matter when Mabel Hallam, the white wife of a streetcar conductor and daughter-in-law of a prominent political figure, accused him of sexual assault. According to Hallam, her attacker had a torn coat, and police claimed to find a tear and traces of blood on Richardson’s clothing. Despite this, multiple eyewitnesses swore that Richardson had been on his front porch with his wife at the time of the alleged attack.
The police arrested Richardson anyway. During a shaky lineup identification, Hallam reportedly told police she wasn’t sure because “all colored men looked alike” to her. Still, she picked out Richardson. He was charged with rape and locked in a cell alongside Joe James, another Black man accused of killing a white man in an unrelated incident a month earlier.
News of the arrests spread fast. On August 14, 1908, a mob of about 5,000 white men gathered downtown demanding vigilante justice. When they learned that the sheriff had secretly transferred Richardson and James out of town to prevent a lynching, the mob turned its rage on Springfield’s Black community.
The mob tore through Black neighborhoods with hatchets, bricks, and torches. Black-owned businesses were looted and destroyed. Homes were burned, sometimes with people still inside. Black residents were beaten in the streets, some attacked with furniture stolen from their own homes. Even white citizens who sympathized with Black residents became targets. Two Black men, Scott Burton and William Donnegan, were lynched, Burton shot and hanged from a tree, and Donnegan brutally murdered in front of his home for having a white wife.
The violence stretched over two days, with the Illinois National Guard finally stepping in to restore order.
By the time the violence ended, at least 17 people were dead. Around 50 Black homes and 35 businesses were destroyed. Financial damages exceeded $150,000 (over $5 million today), nearly all suffered by the Black community.
While the city burned and its Black community mourned, George Richardson sat in jail, imprisoned by a white woman’s lie. Then came the truth. Two weeks after the indictment, medical experts had examined Richardson and determined he showed no signs of the sexually transmitted disease Hallam claimed to have contracted from her rapist. In fact, they concluded that Richardson had “no connection with her in any way.”
Once confronted with this medical evidence, Hallam shifted her story. She now accused a different man, “Ralph Burton,” supposedly the 19-year-old son of lynched Black resident Scott Burton. But there was no such person. Burton’s family confirmed he had no son by that name. Eventually, Hallam confessed that she had fabricated the entire story to conceal an affair with a white man from her husband.
Had Richardson been lynched, as so many other Black men were following false accusations, the truth would have been buried, and he would have become another statistic in a long history of racial violence. Instead, his exoneration marked a brief moment of justice, though it came too late to undo the destruction that had already occurred.
No charges were ever filed against Mabel Hallam for perjury or making a false police report, despite the devastating consequences of her lie. After recanting her accusation and changing her story multiple times, she and her husband quietly relocated to Chicago to escape the scandal. Hallam lived out the remainder of her life in relative obscurity, burdened by the weight of her deception. In 1921, at just 34 years old, she reportedly died by suicide.
Richardson, on the other hand, was released without apology or restitution. The riot had destroyed his reputation, driven his younger brother into exile, and seen two of his older brothers jailed for “public safety.” He spent the rest of his life working as a janitor, dying at age 76 in St. John’s Hospital. His obituary did not mention the events of 1908.
Sources
https://www.nps.gov/spra/index.htm
https://presidentlincoln.illinois.gov/Resources/310ee587-5442-444c-8165-7916f8903c85/springfield-race-riot-catalog.pdf
