corruption, etc. However, over time, and with perspective, historians now agree that such things were palatable excuses, and easier to reconcile than the true underlying reasons. Today, most historians agree that the attacks were brought about a "strain" poor whites felt about not being able to control their political and economic reality. This lack of perceived power is at odds with the idea of white manhood, which in the U.S., has long been synonymous with dominance of political voting rights, dominance in the economic arena, and dominance as sexual partners, and protectors, of white women, breeding an expectation of entitlement to these things. When wages contract, job stability is threatened, cultural norms are pressed (e.g. increase of immigrant culture, an increased presence of black people or black people who are financially more well off than many whites, etc.), and white women give voice to a sexual threat from an "other," white men perceive a threat to the dominance of their manhood. This perception, of any such threat, increases the likelihood for violence; while the convergence of such deemed threats is likely to increase the expression of that violence: Whites who had political and economic power could escape the "torment" of living around those different from themselves, maintaining a social perception of white supremacy. However, those who lacked such economic and political power, were "tormented" by the reality that they were not superior to the black people and immigrants they lived among at all. This created a perception that they were "under siege," and felt compelled to take action to assert and maintain their dominance in the social arena, and punish those who they deemed to have transgressed against them: Poor immigrants, on the other hand, looking for acceptance as Americans, aligned themselves with the dominant social class through skin color which, in America, superseded nationality, culture and religion. Black people were easy targets because they were few in number, had no means to fight back and, as an unprotected class of citizens, could be harmed with minimal, if any, repercussions. Ultimately, Springfield's whites attacked the city's black people simply because they could. Legacy NAACP creation As a direct result of the attacks, concerned black and white citizens met in New York City to discuss and address racism and white supremacy in the U.S. They formed the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), a civil rights organization. Commemorations