President Joe Biden on Friday designated the site of a 1908 race riot in Illinois a national monument.

Biden signed a proclamation marking the 116th anniversary of the Springfield riot in which a mob of white residents attacked Black-owned businesses. The rioters looted and burned not only businesses but homes, lynching two Black men in the process.

The new monument will tell the story of a horrific attack by a white mob on a Black community that was representative of the racism, intimidation, and violence that Black Americans experienced across the country, the White House said in a statement .

The riot began after a crowd of white people gathered outside the Sangamon County Jail to demand that 17-year-old Joe James and 36-year-old George Richardson be released so the mob could lynch them. James and Richardson who were Black had been accused of assaulting or attempting to assault a white woman.

One of their white accusers later recanted. But when James and Richardson were moved to a jail farther away, the mob attacked the Black community in violence that would last through the weekend.