William Donnegan was an 84-year-old Black cobbler, property owner, former conductor on the Underground Railroad and longtime resident of Springfield, Illinois, whose wealth and interracial marriage made him a target of white resentment during the infamous Springfield Race Riot of 1908.
Born in Kentucky and a long-time resident of Springfield, Illinois, Donnegan was a respected cobbler, a property owner, and a man of influence who had lived in the city for nearly 60 years.
Donnegan’s life stood in stark contrast to the prevailing social norms of white supremacy. He was financially secure, reportedly worth about $15,000 at the time (equivalent to over $500,000 today). He owned multiple properties, including his own home in an all-white neighborhood. Even more scandalous to many whites of the era, Donnegan had been married to Sarah Rudolph, a white woman of Irish-German descent, for more than 30 years.
After the Civil War, Donnegan had served as a broker between white employers and newly freed Black labourers, a role that brought him both criticism and notoriety. Some white residents blamed him for the presence of a Black population in Springfield, since many of those he helped settle remained in the area. Still, Donnegan had broken no laws. His only crime, in the eyes of the mob, was living with dignity and success in a country that refused to see Black people as equals.
On the night of August 14, 1908, the same night that saw widespread terror during the Springfield Race Riot, a mob of white men approached Donnegan’s home around 9:00 PM. Though his family made desperate calls to the local jail and militia headquarters, no help arrived in time. The mob, enraged and heavily armed, began making threats to burn down the house.
Six men stormed inside, firing their guns. Donnegan’s family escaped out the back, but he, suffering from severe rheumatism and nearly blind, could not flee. He tried hiding under a bed, but the mob found him, struck him in the face, and dragged him outside. Bricks and stones rained down on the elderly man as he pleaded for mercy, but his appeals fell on deaf ears.
The mob then slashed Donnegan’s throat, reportedly with a razor. As Donnegan stumbled about bleeding, the crowd dragged him across the street to a low tree near the Edwards School, just two blocks from the Governor’s office. Using a clothesline, they looped it four times around his neck and once around his mouth, tying the other end to the tree. Because the tree was short, Donnegan’s feet were only partially off the ground. He was left hanging, mutilated and gasping.
A few members of the mob returned to set fire to his home, but the militia arrived just in time to disperse them. They found Donnegan still alive. His neck had been so badly slashed that he was breathing through holes in his windpipe. A piece of the clothesline was locked in his jaw and couldn’t be removed.
Donnegan was taken to St. John’s Hospital, where militia physicians treated his injuries and stitched the eight-inch gash across his neck. He never regained consciousness and died the following morning.
His lynching was not just a random act of racial violence, it was a calculated attack on Black success. Donnegan’s wealth, self-sufficiency, and interracial marriage defied the racial order of the time, and for that, he was targeted and killed.
Despite the public horror and the sheer brutality of the act, no one was ever punished for William Donnegan’s lynching.
Sources:
https://dnrhistoric.illinois.gov/research/digital-dnr/digital-dnr-archive.william-k-donnegan.html
https://www.sj-r.com/story/news/2008/05/31/the-victims-william-donnegan/43207015007/
