"A Warlike Demonstration": Legalism, Armed Resistance, and Black Political Mobilization in Decatur, Illinois, 1894-1898

Abstract

It is the thesis of this volume that subjection to violence in various forms has been a central ingredient of the Afro-American experience. Violence, the actuality or the threat of death or serious injury from assault, has constituted an ever-present reality in practically every black community and for practically every black person. Herbert Shapiro, White and Black Response, 1988 Lynching is crucial in the continuance of the racial system in the south. . . . It is the most powerful and convincing form of racial repression operating in the interest of the status quo. Lynchings serve the indispensable social function of providing the ruling class with means of periodically reaffirming its collective sentiment of white dominance. Oliver C. Cox, Caste, Class and Race, 1948 In a memorable quotation from the turbulent 1960s, black activist Jamal Al-Amin (a.k.a. H. Rap Brown) declared, Violence is as American as cherry pie. Amin's statement is a commentary on the nature of American society and an indictment of the system of racial oppression. The truth of Amin's simile reminds us that violence has been at the center of race relations in the United States. In the main, African-Americans have been the victims, rather than the perpetrators of racially motivated violence. Race riots and lynchings have been the dominant forms of collective violence used against African-Americans. Race riots have typified anti-black violence during the twentieth century, while lynchings symbolized racial repression during the 1890s.(1) For example, between 1890 and 1900, 121 African-Americans were lynched yearly. In more graphic terms this means that every three days a black man, woman, or child was murdered by a racist mob. Therefore, lynching, the most blatant form of racial violence, is crucial to understanding American race relations at this pivotal historical moment.(2) Though lynching has been a central chapter in the American narrative, it has received scant attention from historians. Social activists and sociologists have dominated scholarship on this gruesome phenomenon. Sociologists have articulated various explanations for lynching and have compared it to other mechanisms of social control. While their contributions have enriched our understanding of this form of collective violence, the impersonal nature of their mathematical models has served to eclipse the role of human agency. Further, their theoretical frameworks have generally been ahistorical. When historians have explored this terrain, they have tended to focus on the South, or they have chronicled campaigns for a federal anti-lynching law.(3) This southern emphasis is understandable; after all, lynching was a southern mania, but it was also a national tragedy. For instance, between 1891 and 1914 at least twenty-two lynchings occurred in the northern state of Illinois - including eight in central Illinois between 1893 and 1908. Further, the focus on national anti-lynching campaigns has predisposed lynching scholarship toward emphasizing legal action, thus obscuring more militant forms of local opposition and resistance.(4) During the last decade of the nineteenth century, racial violence erupted across the nation. Besides the institution of racial terror, this decade witnessed the disfranchisement of African-Americans and the consolidation of American apartheid. In response to the resurgence of racism, Rayford Logan, an African-American historian, termed the 1890s the nadir of the African-American experience. On June 3, 1893 this horror struck the black community of Decatur, Illinois, when Samuel J. Bush, an African-American day laborer accused of rape, was forcibly taken from the Macon County jail and lynched.(5) This essay examines the reaction of black leadership in Decatur, Illinois, to the Bush lynching and the attempt to incite the lynching of James Jackson a year later. Black leaders continued their protests of the Bush lynching into the 1898 Congressional and Macon County Sheriff races. …