By Athan Yanos
Leonardo Pini
& Medill Illinois News Bureau

SPRINGFIELD – As Black History Month comes to an end, the Illinois State Museum this week honored Black Springfield residents who excelled in their military service to the country – from forgotten heroes of the Civil War to soldiers deployed in France during World War I who earned the nickname “Black Devils” from the Germans. 

The event was one in a series dedicated to the Black community of Springfield, organized in a partnership with the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, the Illinois State Museum, Springfield’s local public Lincoln Library, the Illinois State Military Museum and Fever River Research. 

It capped a variety of tributes during Black History Month and historical talks, hikes, films and tours put on by Springfield state historic sites to showcase the lives and accomplishments of Springfield’s Black residents.

“The main takeaway we want people to walk away with is that Black excellence in terms of military service has been tied before and during and after the Civil War to the struggle for freedom and citizenship,” said Sheila Ryan, a researcher who works at the Illinois Department of Natural Resources and helped organize an event Wednesday in their honor. 

Springfield has a deep history in the Civil Rights movement. The city’s brutal 1908 race riots were a principal catalyst for the establishment of the National Association for The Advancement of Colored People, or NAACP.

The Springfield race riots were spurred by an angry mob looking to lynch a pair of Black men in the Sangamon County Jail, who were being held on unrelated charges of murder and rape – though the alleged rape victim, a white woman, would later recant her story. Officials nervous about the mob orchestrated a false fire to distract the crowd to move the men from the jail, which further angered the mob leading to an all-out riot that ultimately lynched two other Black men and killed more than a dozen others involved. 

The mob burned down much of Springfield’s poorer Black neighborhood and destroyed dozens of Black-owned businesses in the city’s wealthier mostly Black neighborhood.

Inset photo somewhere around here

In 2019, archaeological mitigation efforts for the Springfield Rail Improvements Project found that some of those homes in the neighborhood that burned down during the riots, then known as the Badlands, belonged to some of the Black military men who excelled and were celebrated during this month’s exhibit at the Illinois State Museum.

That included  Silas Sappington, who was a member of the 55th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment – an all-Black regiment with white officers that served during the Civil War, according to Adam Krall, who also helped organize the event and is a historic site interpreter with the Illinois Department of Natural Resources. 

The exhibit also features Otis Duncan, who helped put down the 1908 race riots and in the process had his family home attacked and ransacked, destroying a portrait of his mother. Duncan at the time served in the 8th Infantry Regiment of the Illinois National Guard, which later became the 370th Infantry Regiment, an all-Black regiment. 

As its colonel, Duncan went on to lead the regiment, which served alongside the French during the First World War. 

“ The French called them partridges, which is a mark of honor and distinction because these men go into battle very proudly and very bravely,” Krall said. “The Germans gave them a nickname – the ‘Black Devils’ – because they feared these men. When they attacked, they didn’t stop.”

As a result of their actions in the war, soldiers of the 370th Infantry Regiment received 21 Distinguished Service Crosses from the United States and 68 Croix de Guerre from France, an honor awarded to soldiers for bravery in combat.

Despite their military accomplishments, the Black soldiers returned home to a society that didn’t treat them as equals. Krall noted that Springfield’s Oak Ridge Cemetery, which features President Abraham Lincoln’s tomb, also has 28 Black Civil War soldiers buried there.

“Their service and their graves have been essentially forgotten, or it was not convenient to talk about it,” Krall said. “To bring this to fore is something really important for us as historical interpreters.

Among the attendees at Wednesday’s event, Eric Sanchez, a veteran deployed in Iraq and a resident of Quincy, Illinois, said he drove two hours each way to see the exhibit and learn more about soldiers who have made the same sacrifice he has. 

“When you are a soldier, you want to come home to a grateful population,” Sanchez said. “I love history, and I wanted to see what it was like to be a Black soldier in the 1900s, when many Black people were still treated like criminals in society.” 

Athan Yanos and Leonardo Pini are graduate students in journalism with Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications, and a Fellow in its Medill Illinois News Bureau working in partnership with Capitol News Illinois.Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.