(upbeat music) (camera beeps) (bright music) - Welcome to another edition of "InFocus."

I'm Jennifer Fuller.

Illinois is rich in history and that history drives tourism to locations from border to border.

Recent statistics show tourism's economic impact is significant for Illinois, to the tune of more than 100 million annual visitors and more than $40 billion.

While those numbers declined a bit due to the Covid pandemic, analysts say they're bouncing back.

Springfield's ties to one of the most famous presidents in US history brings people from all over the world to Illinois's capital city.

There they can walk the streets Abraham Lincoln walked and visit many of the places he frequented, including the old state capitol where he delivered his famous A House Divided speech.

Now there's an additional distinction at the old state capitol.

Researchers have found a new historic designation for the 185 year old building connecting it to the Underground Railroad.

Julie Staley shows us how it's shaping the history of Illinois.

- There are several locations in Springfield that have a connection to the Underground Railroad.

One of them has been found to go right through here at the Illinois Supreme Court at the old state capitol building.

Stories about the Underground Railroad in Springfield have been shared for more than a century, but because of its secretive nature, they can be hard to prove.

Sources like books, newspapers, and letters pieced together the facts, but newly researched legal documents are also bringing light to this history.

- The Underground Railroad was illegal and it was secret, so you did not necessarily go around telling folks about it.

But if you were a radical abolitionist, which is the people who actually were conductors and agents for the railroad, then you likely knew someone who knew someone, who knew someone of the same mindset.

- Freedom Seekers.

They would be the people who would be escaping from enslavement and whatnot, and they would, if they either got caught, they could be brought in before the Supreme Court or just on the circuit courts or small city courts in Illinois.

So that's kind of where most of this stuff comes from, the association with the Underground Railroad in this building is Supreme Court cases that happened here that deal with those people, conductors and freedom seekers.

- [Julie] Three cases in the Illinois Supreme Court put the old state capitol in the Network to Freedom.

The program was created in 1998 through the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom Act.

This documents verifiable connections to the Underground Railroad.

Today, more than 700 locations have been identified.

Springfield has been listed before, but these three cases marked the first time the old state capitol has been listed.

- When people come here, of course they're here for the Lincoln stuff, but they don't really think, well, did other stuff happen here?

Other stuff must have had to happen here.

Springfield's been the state capitol since 1837 pretty much.

Now, this building opens up in 1839, 1840, and the Supreme Court is here pretty much the entire time.

- [Julie] Two cases happened in 1843: Eells versus The People, Dr. Richard Eells was convicted by the Supreme Court for aiding a freedom seeker in his home in Quincy, Illinois, and Willard versus The People, Julius Willard and his son Samuel, a student here at Illinois College at the time, were convicted for helping a freedom seeker in Jacksonville.

The third case took place in 1850.

Thornton's case brought charges to a Black man named Hempstead Thornton.

He claimed he was wrongfully arrested.

When the local constable didn't have enough evidence, the charges were dropped.

The arrest took place during an event called the Slave Stampede.

Local authorities found out about a group of freedom seekers trying to get north from St. Louis.

A fight broke out in Springfield between the group and the authorities, and Thornton was arrested.

This case is connected to another story already on the Network to Freedom in Springfield.

Jameson Jenkins was a local drayman.

In February of 1861, he drove Abraham Lincoln to the train depot when he left for the White House.

But in 1850, Jenkins planned to intercept the Freedom Seekers coming from St. Louis with Hempstead Thornton and take them to Bloomington in his wagon.

Jenkins lived in a house that used to be on this lot, just a half a block from the home of Abraham Lincoln.

- So Jenkins helped a group that were coming from St. Louis get further north on their way, presumably, perhaps all the way to Canada.

And being a drayman or having a wagon is a good profession to have if you want to help freedom seekers get further north.

We wouldn't have known about his involvement if it wasn't for newspaper reports that actually named Jenkins.

It's kind of a confusing series of articles in 1850.

Did he betray freedom seekers?

Was he helping the freedom seekers?

But ultimately it was determined that he was actually helping them get further north.

- So Jameson Jenkins would've had at least some connection with his neighbor, Abraham Lincoln.

That calls into question whether or not Abraham Lincoln knew about the Underground Railroad here in Springfield and other stuff like that.

It's difficult to say.

You have to look at it in a few different ways when it comes to Lincoln.

Lincoln being a lawyer, a man of the law, he's not going to really legally be in favor of something like the Underground Railroad.

Now, of course, his own personal opinions and thoughts may say otherwise, that he does in fact support the Underground Railroad.

- These cases are proof that the old state capitol is a key part of the history of the Underground Railroad in a state that was free, but not safe for those who sought freedom.

- It was based on a lot of trust and a lot of faith.

Trust in your fellow man and faith in the man upstairs to get you as to where you really wanted to go.

And there were lines, of course, in Illinois because of our location on the Mississippi River and the further south you get at the confluence of the Ohio and the Mississippi, down at Cairo.

Because if you're in Cairo and if you go across the river, you could be in slave territory.

- It wasn't an environment friendly to African Americans in Illinois, although African Americans did live here and did thrive in some cases, and almost in spite of what you would think with the laws on the books.

They shouldn't have been able to accomplish what they did, which is a testament to their initiative and desire and efforts to achieve this dream of the founders that Lincoln espoused so much.

- Pretty much entering the lion's den so to speak.

I mean, you know, again, Springfield is gonna be one of the hotter places that's very anti-abolition.

Even though we always get the idea of, well, Abraham Lincoln was from here, so how could it not be an abolitionist type town?

But a lot of people don't realize how different things were back then.

And you know, just because Abraham Lincoln was from here doesn't mean everybody's gonna share those ideas.

And you know, he has a good reputation in town, but those thoughts and ideas are not really, you know, I don't wanna say welcome, but you can't really parade around the streets talking about abolition.

- [Julie] The old state capitol cases offer proof of the legal struggles for those seeking freedom and punishment that was upheld in Illinois before 1850.

That's when the Fugitive Slave law tightened requirements to help enslavers catch those who had escaped.

- Well, I think there was never an enslaved person who didn't want to be free, even though they might not have known what freedom was, but they knew that there had to be something better than the life that they were living now.

And in Springfield, Springfield was indeed a station.

Harriet Tubman probably the most famous conductor on the railroad, who never came to Illinois because that was not her territory.

But she said something to the effect that she would've led more slaves to freedom if they'd only known that they were slaves, but that was the only life that they had ever known.

They didn't know any different.

- And the fact that this was African-Americans also deeply involved in this, not waiting for someone else to do for them, but they were active agents in this effort of really pushing back against the institution of slavery.

- It's always important to preserve history and to know the history.

Springfield does have a unique story to tell, not only because of Lincoln's presence here but even moving forward where we can talk about the 1908 race riot, which brought Springfield once again to national attention, and more importantly, the formation of the NAACP.

And then even moving more forward into our time of history, the fact that our president made his announcements at the site of the old state Capitol, that's where he made his first remarks, and then that's where he made his announcement about the vice president who is now the president.

So you know, Springfield has a role in history.

- And the work goes on.

Stories about the Underground Railroad in Springfield will continue to be researched and confirmed for a more accurate picture of the past.

For "InFocus," I'm Julie Staley.

- The number of Network to Freedom Sites could be much higher in Illinois.

The National Park Service continues to encourage people to go through the process of verifying information to ensure these stories are preserved and not lost to history.

Our conversation continues as we take a closer look at tourism and history, and how they both travel so well together with historian and author Mark Motsinger.

Mark, thanks for joining us.

- It's nice to be here.

- You have a great combination here of just what we're talking about in that you sit on the Illinois State Historical Society Board.

You also are president of the Saline County Historical Society, but you're also involved in tourism too with the Southern most Illinois Tourism Bureau and lots of other organizations.

How important is it for history to be a part of tourism and tourism to remember the history of the area it serves?

- You know, southern Illinois is kind of a diverse area.

We have a lot of different cultures that came into this area.

And history, we don't have any big battlefields, we don't have any president's homes and that type of thing, but what we do have is a lot of nice stories that can be told.

And if you add those together with our recreational things you take, you know, visiting Garden of the Gods and you visit the cave and talk about the history there, or hopefully the Crenshaw House is going to be, the state's doing some work there.

If you start adding all those together, it makes Southern Illinois a really unique place to visit.

- Sure.

People also look at places like following the Trail of Tears, or perhaps they visit some of the Fort Massac or Fort de Chartres, or other areas of Southern Illinois.

But you mentioned stories.

You also can talk about the Lincoln-Douglas debates in Jonesboro and in other places across the state.

- A lot of places have heritage trails.

And of course the Lincoln-Douglas debates is also part of that heritage trail.

We know we have the Lewis and Clark Heritage Trail through here.

But I can kind of see some regional heritage trails kind of popping up that I think would be great for tourism in this area.

- You mentioned that Southern Illinois has so much recreationally that draws people to this area, and the Shawnee National Forest is probably the largest, at least geographically, that causes people to come in.

Now you've been involved with a specific tour, the Trigg Tour, in the Shawnee National Forest and in Deep Southern Illinois.

How important is it to remember the history of how that all got started and why it is the way that it is?

- Well, you know, probably the father, well pretty much the father of the Shawnee National Forest is L.O.

Trigg and he had a business card that he passed around.

It said, you know, salesman for the Illinois Ozarks, but not in a real estate business, and he had kind of the right idea.

He first started out as a reforestation project where he was trying to get, you know, the trees to regrow and that type of thing.

And then he saw recreation as a possibility of a way to kind of bring us out of the poverty that we were in.

He also saw a very good opportunity to take the history of Southern Illinois, the recreational stuff in Southern Illinois, and just kind of tie 'em all in together.

And that's what we've done with the revitalization of the Trigg Tours.

By doing that, we have kind of created a kind of a trail that people could follow.

We've gone to old Shawnee Town.

We left there and we went to Equality.

Then we went to the Salt Wells and then to the Crenshaw House, and we eventually ended up in Rosiclare, looked at the Fluorspar Museum, and then we finished our evening at the Rose Hotel.

And these kind of trails, I think, are the best way to kind of package Southern Illinois Tourism.

- Tourism as a part of the Illinois economy is a big part of what comes and goes in and out of Illinois.

How do you draw people in to areas where the towns are a little bit smaller, the pace is a little bit slower, and maybe it's not as bright and glitzy as a big city, but there certainly is much to see?

- Well, you know, one of the problems that we do have with tourism is the infrastructure.

We really don't have the infrastructure, a lot of times, it takes.

But I think what's gonna have to happen, there's gonna have to be a cooperation between areas because nobody really thinks about, I'm just coming to Harrisburg from Chicago.

When they come down here, they want to go to to Harrisburg but they might wanna also go to, you know, to another county.

And we've gotta start working together as a group.

And I think southernmost is trying to do that, but right now we kind of have, like, little areas that's really just kind of says, "This is my area and I'm gonna promote it."

We've all gotta start working together on this because like I said, we don't really have anything in particular but we have a lot of stuff that you can lump together in a really great package.

- When you work with communities and try to work on these collaborations and things like that, are you able to point to other areas where there have been successes in terms of boosting tourism and boosting that infrastructure?

- Well, one of the areas that, and I also, I talk every so often at what's known as a Francis Marion Symposium.

And in Clarendon County, South Carolina, they have put together kind of a really unique trail system and it's called a mural trail.

And wherever there was a Francis Marion battlefield, there's really nothing there left.

It was just a place and a swamp or somewhere where they had a battle.

But they will put these murals up and people can follow these murals from place to place.

Southern Illinois could have something similar to that, I think.

It would be, you know, you could follow the mural and then you could maybe go see the real place, a mural to Stoneface, and then you think, well, that's really kind of neat.

I'd like to go see Stoneface.

In the town of Muddy, you have some really unique little things there that would be kind of a nice thing to see.

And you could just kind of follow this mural system around and it would be kind of a way to see the pictures, get an idea of it, and then go see the real thing.

And you could just follow it from point A to point B. I think it would be a kind of an interesting way to do that.

- A lot of people who both have grown up in Central and Southern Illinois or have moved to the area, talk about, "Boy, I wish people where I used to live or where I visited could see the things that I get to see every day."

What would you recommend to those people who would like to bring more people to Southern Illinois or to Central Illinois to kind of get the word out there for them?

- Well, I think one of the best things is just we need to promote it.

And if you look at the Saline County visitors, it's Visit Saline County Facebook page, we have put together little clips promoting the area and promoting, and we're not trying to just promote Harrisburg or Saline County, because we know that when people come here, they're gonna go to Burden Falls or one of those places, so we're just kind of putting out these little clips that I think social media can kind of push out there.

Sean Grossman has done a great job with Hiking with Sean.

Mike Travinko in his new book has done a great job, which I helped, I collaborated on.

But things like that, I think, with the social media is probably the way to go with these things.

- What do you see in the future when it comes to history and tourism?

Do you see people getting more interested in not just going to a place, but understanding the history of that place?

- I think so, and one of the projects that we're working on, and Mary McCorby and Heather Carrier are kind of heading this up, is that they kind of do a kind of a heritage-type trail of Black settlements and the Black history of Southern Illinois.

Places like Lakeview, Millers Grove, Locust Grove, even the Salt Wells.

Those type of places make great places for people to kind of connect with their heritage and to just kind of follow around and see these spots and see the spot where people actually existed and lived and struggled.

- You mentioned earlier that there is some struggle in terms of collaboration, bringing people together, because everyone wants to say that my thing is the thing that you need to come see.

Do you see that Illinois as a whole is working to try and bring that collaboration together so that if people are going to take a trip, perhaps they spend a few days across the state?

- You know, if you drive through Tennessee and you stop at their rest stops, what they've done is they've broken Tennessee off into these different groups, you know, the upland area, the middle area, the lowland area, and I think Illinois could probably do that.

Saying, you know, as you pass through Illinois, and most people, let's face it, go from north to south or south to north.

As you pass through these areas, this is what each one of these has.

And I think tourism has tried to do that but I think we could focus on that just a little bit more and just say, "This is everything that we're offering in Southern Illinois" and really push that as not just Harrisburg, not just Carbondale, but the entire end of the state as a destination.

- Certainly.

Mark Motsinger is a historian and an author and very busy in tourism and historical events and planning across Southern and Central Illinois.

Mark, thanks so much for your time.

- Thank you for having me.

- We now take a look at another historical site in Illinois, Fort Massac State Park, which sits on the Ohio River in Massac County, near the waterways confluence with the Mississippi River at Cairo.

For nearly 50 years now, Fort Massac has hosted an encampment which demonstrates what life was like in the late 17th century.

The encampment, like so many other events, was put on hold during the pandemic but returned in the fall of 2022, welcoming hundreds of students for a day of living history.

WSIU's Benjy Jeffords was there.

(inspiring music) - [Chris] Today we're having the education days.

We have approximately 3,500 kids out here today doing demonstrations on the late 1700s, early 1800s period.

- This is all here so that you can learn what life was like 250 years ago.

It was very hard.

It was very brutal.

- Everything is indicative of that period, whether it be the food, the clothing, or the way they're cooking.

(popcorn popping) Everything is from that period.

- We come down here a day early just to entertain the school children, give 'em an idea what went on with the cannons, how they were loaded, how they were fired, and just some entertainment for 'em.

You maybe interest 'em in history.

(all counting down in foreign language) (cannon fires) - It's a living history.

I mean, as I told somebody the other day, when I was in school, I was taught the more senses you you can use, the better you learn, and of course the smells, the sounds, the seeing it, and then the explanations that we give them help them to understand how this country was formed.

- That's what I'm using here is coal, is you really have to monitor it because it gets really hot the more air you put into it, so you can actually burn your steel up.

(metal clanging) - In fourth grade, at our school, we teach an Illinois History Unit.

And actually during that unit, we talk about the French and Indian War.

And so a lot of the people that they are discussing are people that we learn about in our social studies and Illinois History.

I think it's very important, because I substitute teach and those kids, a lot of 'em don't know anything about history.

And it's not because they don't wanna learn.

It's because it's not in the book.

- [Jessica] Seeing how these people are living would be something that they don't really get to see, you know, in the book.

Knowing how these things actually happened and the way people lived is very important, that they get to see.

(people chattering) - I think they enjoy it.

We would really hope that they enjoy it, because if we can get that spark of interest in history, then they might follow it.

Yeah.

There has to be teachers to teach history and there has to be students that want to be teachers.

- They really enjoy it.

They like seeing the authentic setup and everything and they like the cannons and the gunshots, and they really enjoyed this reenactment right here.

- Get ready!

Go!

(children yelling) - It was honestly kind of scary 'cause you were watching everyone shoot at you, and then you would, and then, I don't know, and then they yell that they shot you and it was fun.

(gun fires) (children screaming) - [Reenactment Member] Keep fighting, keep fighting!

- We came over here, we grabbed a fake gun, and we started fighting.

- [Thomas] They're actually getting to explore the time period that was here and throughout the colonials.

- [Camden] It's fun just walking around and sliding down hills.

It's fun.

- We haven't had this kid's day for two years 'cause of Covid, and everybody seems to be very happy to be back out here.

Everybody's smiling, having a good time.

It takes a lot of coordination, of course, to put on an event of this size.

We'll have close to 200,000 people this weekend out here.

- That's it for this edition of "InFocus."

I'm Jennifer Fuller.

You can find InFocus online at wsiu.org or at our YouTube channel.

Thanks for joining us.

We'll see you next time.

(bright music) (upbeat music) (camera beeps)