Springfield, Illinois: Where conversations about race create ripples of community

by Julie Fanselow

May 1, 2005 | | Springfield, IL

Springfield, Illinois, is well known as the city where Abraham Lincoln launched his legal and political career in the mid-19th century. But when Sandy Robinson moved here in 1993 and took a job with the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, he learned about a seldom-told chapter in local history.

Even in Lincoln’s day, Springfield had a small, thriving African-American community. By 1908, blacks comprised about 5.5 percent of the city’s population of 47,000. But racial tensions were on the rise that summer, and on August 14, a group of white men gathered at the county jail seeking to kill two black prisoners—one accused of a sexual assault on a white woman, the other of killing a white railroad engineer. When the mob realized police had spirited the two prisoners to safety, the men looted dozens of black- and Jewish-owned businesses and homes, and lynched two black men. Several thousand black residents left Springfield, and many stayed away for good. Although this race riot in the Land of Lincoln received extensive press coverage and was a major catalyst in the 1909 establishment of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, it faded from most Springfielders’ memory.

In the mid-1990s, fueled by a combination of local conflicts—notably the firing of a black police officer—and national events, including the beating of Rodney King and the murder trial of O.J. Simpson, racial tensions in Springfield surfaced again. “I can’t tell you we weren’t close to being a tinderbox like Los Angeles or Cincinnati,” Robinson says.

In 1997, concerned by the level of racial animosity, Mayor Karen Hasara asked Springfield’s Community Relations Commission to come up with strategies for addressing the problem. A citizen, Bridget Lamont, suggested that the city try study circles—a way to help people from diverse backgrounds meet for small-group conversations and work together to improve race relations in their city. Hasara and the commission investigated the idea and thought it had potential.

By that time, Sandy Robinson was working for Springfield’s Department of Community Relations, which Hasara charged with implementing the study circles idea. Robinson has a background in historical interpretation, and he knows the power of symbolism. He staged the kickoff in Illinois’ Old State Capitol, the site of Abraham Lincoln’s famous address to the state Republican convention in 1858. “A house divided against itself cannot stand,” Lincoln said. “I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.”

‘Hate—Not in Our City!’

Over the next two years, the city held two rounds of study circles that engaged several hundred people, about 30 percent of them people of color. (Springfield’s minority population now stands at about 13 percent.) One immediate result was the mayor’s appointment of a 12-member Race Relations Task Force charged with carrying out recommendations from the study circles. Also, during the study circles, participants frequently said they would like to see more racial diversity in the police and fire departments. In response, Hasara set a goal that the public safety departments would have 15 percent minority employees by 2005.

The Race Relations Task Force vowed to work on long-standing issues of racial equity, and to act as a rapid response team for incidents that could strain race relations in the city. It wasn’t long after the formation of the task force that Springfield faced just such a challenge. Matt Hale, a notorious white supremacist from Peoria, Illinois, announced plans to speak at Springfield’s public library in the summer of 2001. Only months before, Hale sparked violence when he appeared at the public library in his home base of Peoria.

Study circles…are “absolutely an opportunity … to meet all the folks who are engaged on social justice and economic justice issues.” -Sandy Robinson, director of Springfield’s Department of Community Relations and study circle program

Hale no doubt hoped for headlines and controversy in Springfield. Instead, study circle participants and other community groups scheduled a “Celebration of Diversity” and made signs with the legend Hate—Not in Our Homes, Not in Our Neighborhoods, Not in Our City! “Those signs were in place to greet Mr. Hale on his entrance to the city,” Sandy Robinson says. To make matters worse for Hale, only about 15 people showed up specifically to hear his lecture (though 60 to 70 law-enforcement officers and protesters were nearby). Meanwhile, the unity celebration drew several hundred citizens— and the anti-hate signs remain posted at the city limits to this day. “The Matt Hale visit showed how the community can pull together,” Hasara says.

Diversifying the police and fire ranks has been tougher to do. Over the past few years, Springfield has seen plenty of strife in its police ranks, including race discrimination lawsuits. Some changes have been made in hiring practices, but neither the fire nor police department has reached Mayor Hasara’s goal. Yet progress toward that goal continues. “Our work through study circles has brought a sense of ownership to our residents because they have laid the groundwork for greater participation by minorities in the hiring process,” says Timothy J. Davlin, Springfield’s current mayor.

Some other innovative ideas are in the works, too. Plans are in place for a Public Safety Academy that would help students from middle-school age onward learn about and prepare for careers in police, fire, and emergency services. “When funding is available,” says Robinson, “it could start tomorrow.”

Building community—and connections

Money is always a barrier in tight economic times, but communities, governments, and businesses ought to make study circle-style dialogue a priority no matter what the economy is doing, says Nancy Collins, community programs specialist for the Department of Community Relations. “People and relationships are more important than money,” she says.

And in fact, relationships forged in study circles are having positive effects. Bob Blackwell, a longtime study circles proponent and co-chair of the Race Relations Task Force, sees the relationships like concentric circles spreading across the community, creating a wealth of connections. “We’ve become a better place because of our involvement in this process,” he says. “But the circles aren’t just a process; they also have results, and the circles just keep expanding.”

Tim Rowles is director of The Springfield Project, which works with neighborhoods to address deterioration, improve housing, and spur economic development. Study circles helped create the conditions for neighborhoods to move forward with The Springfield Project in efforts to build new affordable housing, rehabilitate existing homes, and open a warehouse to store low-cost, donated construction materials. “Neighborhoods can be really divided,” Rowles says. “Study circles allowed us to bridge the gap—to bring residents together and help them realize they have many of the same issues.”

Sandy Robinson points to many positive programs in Springfield that benefit from the can-do attitude and networks built and sustained by study circles. Study circles, he says, are “absolutely an opportunity … to meet all the folks who are engaged on social justice and economic justice issues.”

The effectiveness of these new networks is reflected in a number of community initiatives. Abundant Faith Christian Center, where Robinson is an associate pastor, has been a powerful catalyst for social change in the city. Among its many social service projects, the congregation bought a dilapidated motel favored by drug dealers and prostitutes, secured $1.5 million in grants, and created King’s Court—a neat and clean 18-apartment community with on-site educational and job-training resources.

Mike Pittman, another lay leader at Abundant Faith, was Sandy Robinson’s predecessor as head of the Department of Community Relations. Now a developer, he is building Eastview Estates, a subdivision of handsome homes sitting amid older, often-neglected neighborhoods. Pittman and his homebuyers could have invested their money for greater return elsewhere in Springfield, says Robinson, but they believe in raising the hopes and economic prospects of the black community.

Toward better neighborhoods

In 2004, Springfield shifted its focus from community-wide study circles to “beat circles”—neighborhood-specific conversations designed to help police and citizens see one another on a more personal level and work together on neighborhood issues. Officer Matt Fricke, a 10-year veteran of the Springfield Police Department, took part in the program and found the process can also prompt specific actions. On Beat 300, Fricke says the circles threw a spotlight on a big, ongoing problem—the many vacant buildings owned by absentee landlords and sometimes rented to drug dealers. “We get one drug dealer out and they rent to another,” Fricke says. But since the beat circle, the city’s public health department has begun maintaining a regularly updated list of such properties in an effort to stay on top of the issue and root out drug activity much sooner.

Landlord accountability also is an issue in the Harvard Park neighborhood, another neighborhood where beat circles are planned. Harvard Park is an area of single-family bungalows along tree-lined streets a mile south of downtown. Over the past few decades, many long-time residents have either died or retired elsewhere, so what was once a neighborhood of homeowners now has many rental properties. Neighborhood association president Polly Poskin says that while the change has brought vitality and diversity (more younger residents and more people of color) to Harvard Park, it’s also left residents frustrated because Springfield does little to oversee or regulate what absentee landlords do with their properties. Poskin hopes the beat circle will help remedy that situation in Harvard Park, and citywide, as well as bring attention to other conditions that isolate Springfield neighborhoods and citizens from one another.

Separate from the city-based programs, Springfield also has people of faith gathering on their own, in each other’s homes, for study circles that emphasize spiritual reconciliation on racial issues and other humanitarian concerns. “Government is limited because it can’t change people from the inside out,” says Nick Stojakovich, who has also taken part in the city-run circles. In spring 2002, Robinson, Stojakovich, and six other people from Abundant Faith Christian Center and Hope Evangelical Free Church took part in a prayer walk to visit each major site of the 1908 Springfield Race Riot.

Teenagers gain insight from dialogue, too. A pilot study circle gathered students from four different high schools—three public and one parochial—to talk about their perceptions of other schools. They realized that despite class differences, they shared many of the same hopes and aspirations. “Ten years from now, those kids will be the face of Springfield,” and the students and the city may see lasting benefits from their participation, says Keith Baker, who has trained youth and adult study circle facilitators.

Raising expectations

Although issues of race have no easy fix, many observers agree that the city is better off now than it would have been had the program never begun.

“I don’t think it’s a silver bullet,” says Frank Price, an African- American man who has participated in and facilitated study circles. “I think it’s a ‘chip-away’ process. I also believe it starts with getting people together who can talk to each other.”

“I really believe Springfield would be in a more dire situation if it were not for the climate study circles helped foster in terms of how we engage on issues,” Sandy Robinson says. Subtle signs abound that he is right. When Robinson first asked for information about the 1908 race riot at the Springfield Convention and Visitors Bureau, he was handed a sheaf of photocopied papers. Today, the bureau has a glossy, fold-out brochure and map telling the story in detail, and noting how the incident helped spur the founding of the NAACP.

In Springfield, businesses that cater to tourists are looking forward to 2009, when the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth will certainly bring many people to town. But everyone from Robinson to the visitors bureau to Richard Norton Smith—a nationally known historian who is now director of Springfield’s new Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum—talks about using the Lincoln anniversary as an opportunity to also draw attention to the 2008 centennial of the Springfield Race Riot.

Springfield, like many other cities, once was a community that looked the other way when it came to racism. But through study circles and related initiatives, Springfield leaders and citizens are learning to address race relations and other community issues in a more open, honest, and meaningful manner. As a result, Springfield is emerging as a community where everyone’s voice can be heard and people know how to work together for positive change.

Learn more: Racial Equity