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(CNN) President Joe Biden signed a proclamation Friday designating the site of a 1908 race massacre in Springfield, Illinois, a national monument. For two nights in August 1908, a White mob laid siege to Springfield, indiscriminately looting, burning and destroying Black-owned homes and businesses, in a race riot that would become known as the Springfield Massacre.
Springfield is on a list of proposed National Monuments highlighted in The Washington Post. The Antiquities Act of 1906 empowers the president to safeguard public lands and waters for the benefit of all Americans. President Biden could invoke the Antiquities Act to establish new national monuments.
The Midwest Region SRS study team created the “architecture of erasure” concept to help the public understand the goal of the white mob to erase Black people from the land. The absence of structures is the important resource that NPS could manage if the site is added to the System.