Collections Database Manuscript & Object Collect... Small collections of manusc... Post-1650 Manuscripts Baker, Rev. Nathan Martin. ... Finding AidTitle: Baker, Rev. Nathan Martin. Correspondence regarding the 1893 lynching of Samuel J. Bush in Decatur, Illinois, 1893
ID: 01/02/02/POST-1650 MS 0678
Primary Creator: Baker, Nathan Martin (1837-1922)
Extent: 10.0 Items
Arrangement: Items are arranged in chronological order. Printed transcriptions accompany the letters.
Date Acquired: 03/28/2014
Subjects: Black people--America--History, Lynching, Macon County (Ill.)
Languages: English
This collection contains correspondence and clippings brought together by Reverend Nathan Martin Baker (1837-1922) regarding the 1893 lynching of Samuel J. Bush, a Black farmhand, in Decatur, IL.
See Administrative/Biographical History for more information.
Samuel J. Bush (circa 1863-1893) was a Black man from Mason, MS, who worked as a farmhand in central Illinois. On June 3, 1893, Bush was lynched by a white mob in Decatur while in the custody of Macon County police, having been accused of rape and attempted rape by two white women near Mt. Zion. The lynching of Bush was the third recorded in Illinois history, and the first in the history of Decatur.
On June 2, 1893, Bush was taken from the farm of George Sargent in Sullivan, IL, to the Macon County Courthouse, where he was placed in a holding cell. As reported by multiple central Illinois newspapers, a mob climate festered in the region in the days leading up to Bush’s arrest, with many Black men being targeted indiscriminately. The Black Citizens' Committee of Decatur offered to guard the Courthouse in light of these conditions, but Macon County Sheriff Peter Perl assured the Committee that the accused would be protected while in custody.
As Bush sat in the Courthouse jail, an angry crowd continued to grow outside. Shortly before 2am on June 3, roughly 25 white men forced their way into the Courthouse and seized Bush. The group brought Bush outside and, before a crowd of nearly 1,500, hanged him from a telephone pole outside the Grand Opera House Cigar Store, opposite the Courthouse.
Illinois Governor John Peter Altgeld denounced the lynching of Bush as “cowardly and diabolical” and offered a $200 reward for "the apprehension and conviction of every man who helped to break the doors of the jail, overpower the officers and drag out the prisoner, or who assisted in killing him" (Decatur Daily Review, June 4, 1893, p. 1). In a letter to “Decatur’s Colored Citizens,” Attorney Wilson B. Woodford described the lynching as "one of the most damnable outrages ever perpetrated upon the law and good order of Macon county."
Nathan Martin Baker (1837-1922), a minister in the Decatur Presbytery of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, wrote a letter urging States Attorney Isaac R. Mills to prosecute members of the mob responsible for lynching Bush. He also published an "Open Letter" in the Decatur Daily Republican on July 3, 1893, decrying the mob's transgression of the law and the concomitant insult to any possible justice in the case. Baker's column initiated a series of personal correspondence with readers both in support and opposed to the sentiments expressed therein. The case saw trial twice, but no indictments were ultimately made.
In 2023, an historical marker was placed at the site of the lynching to remember the life and death of Samuel J. Bush. According to the Illinois State Historical Society, this marker is the first in Illinois to recognize lynchings as a method of racial terrorism.
Sources
Cha-jua, Sundiata Keita. “‘Join Hands and Hearts with Law and Order’: The 1893 Lynching of Samuel J. Bush and the Response of Decatur’s African American Community.” Illinois Historical Journal 83, no. 3 (1990): 187–200. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40192304.
Repository: Rare Book & Manuscript Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Access Restrictions: The collection is open for research.
Use Restrictions:
This collection is the physical property of the Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Intellectual property rights, including copyright, may reside with the materials' creator(s) or their heirs.
The Rare Book & Manuscript Library's reproduction and publication policies are available here. The library welcomes requests for reproductions made from works in our collections, though restrictions may apply to certain materials. Please contact the library with any questions.
Acquisition Source: Swann Auction Galleries
Submit request (Aeon)
