allowed the attack to happen, though they knew about it for a full day. Firemen watched the buildings burn, only to save one saloon owned by a white man. The state militia was called in to restore order. The city shut down the remaining black saloons, and all six men indicted for the lynching were acquitted. In 1906, again in Springfield, Ohio, after a bar fight left two white men cut, and another white man was killed in the railways yards, a white mob began attacking black saloons in the Levee and, "as if by common agreement," black homes. Firefighters' hoses were cut if they tried to save black homes. The state militia, which sympathized with the mob, and was slow to report for duty. Attacks continued for three days until the militia finally quelled it. Thirteen buildings of black residents were destroyed. In 1906, in Springfield, Missouri, a white woman, and her male companion, claimed that two masked black men knocked him down, dragged her into a field, and raped her. The next morning, two young black residents, with upstanding reputations, were arrested. Despite their white employer corroborating their alibi that they were at work, the woman's male companion reported that the two had stolen his pocket watch. The two black men were arrested. That night, a mob of 1,000 white men stormed the black jail and bludgeoned the black men with sledgehammers. They then dragged their bodies through the streets to city square, hanged them from Gottfried Tower, and built a bonfire out of their bodies in front of a crowd of over 5,000 people. They also killed another black man accused of killing a former Confederate soldier. Local police did not interfere. The next day, Easter Sunday, churchgoers sifted through the ashes for souvenirs of the men. The Governor activated state militia. In the days that followed, drugstores and soda shops sold postcards pictures of the men's corpses, along with medals commemorating the triple lynching. A grand jury later determined the black men were innocent when it was revealed that the white woman, and her companion, made up the entire story up. Eighteen men, including a policeman, were indicted for lynching. One trial ended in a mistrial, the others were all dismissed. In the immediate aftermath of the attacks in Springfield (Illinois), many people surmised that the violence was brought on by job competition, alcohol, vice, political