19th century The city is named after
War of 1812 naval hero
Stephen Decatur. The
Potawatomi Trail of Death passed through the city in 1838. Post No. 1 of the
Grand Army of the Republic was founded as a fraternal organization composed of veterans of the
Union Army (United States Army),
Union Navy (U.S. Navy), and the
Marines who served in the
American Civil War. It was founded in Decatur on April 6, 1866. Decatur was the first home in Illinois of
Abraham Lincoln, who settled just west of Decatur with his family in 1830. A historical marker in Decatur claims that, at the age of 21, Lincoln gave his first political speech in Decatur, defending state Whig party leaders. As a lawyer on the 8th Judicial Circuit, Lincoln made frequent stops in Decatur, and argued five cases in the log courthouse that stood on the corner of Main & Main Streets. The original courthouse is now on the grounds of the Macon County Historical Museum on North Fork Road.
John Hanks, first cousin of Abraham Lincoln, lived in Decatur. On May 9 and 10, 1860, the
Illinois Republican State Convention was held in Decatur. At this convention, Lincoln received his first endorsement for President of the United States as "The Railsplitter Candidate". In commemoration of Lincoln's bicentennial, the
Illinois Republican State Convention was held in Decatur at the Decatur Conference Center and Hotel on June 6 and 7, 2008.
20th century speaking in Decatur, 1911 The first modern fly-destruction device (
fly swatter) was invented in 1900 by
Robert R. Montgomery, an entrepreneur based in Decatur, Ill. Montgomery was issued Patent No. 640,790 for the Fly-Killer, a "cheap device of unusual elasticity and durability" made of wire netting, "preferably oblong," attached to a handle. For much of the 20th century, the city was known as "The Soybean Capital of the World" owing to its being the location of the headquarters of
A. E. Staley Manufacturing Company, a major grain processor in the 1920s, which popularized the use of soybeans to produce products for human consumption such as oil, meal and flour. At one time, over a third of all the soybeans grown in the world were processed in Decatur, Illinois. In 1955 a group of Decatur businessmen founded the Soy Capital Bank to trade on the nickname. Decatur was awarded the
All-America City Award in 1960, one of eleven cities honored that year. Decatur is an affiliate of the
U.S. Main Street program, in conjunction with the National Trust for Historic Preservation. On July 19, 1974, a tanker car containing isobutane collided with a boxcar in the
Norfolk & Western railroad yard in the East End of Decatur. The resulting explosion killed seven people, injured 349, and caused $18 million in property damage including extensive damage to nearby Lakeview High School. On April 18 and 19, 1996, the city was hit by tornadoes. On April 18, an
F1 tornado hit the city's southeast side, followed by an
F3 tornado
the following evening on the northwest side. That same tornado then skipped twice, hitting businesses on the northeast side. The two storms totaled approximately $10.5 million in property damage. A new branding effort for Decatur and Macon County was unveiled in 2015, Limitless Decatur.
Jesse Jackson protest In November 1999, Decatur was brought into the national news when
Jesse Jackson and the
Rainbow/PUSH Coalition protested the two-year expulsion of seven African American students who had been involved in a serious fight at an Eisenhower High School football game under a recently enacted "zero tolerance" policy. Six of the students were arrested but not charged after the fracas. Four were later charged as adults with mob action, a felony. Jesse Jackson intervened in the incident, bringing the controversy to national attention, protesting both the severity and length of the punishment and also alleging racial bias (schools in Decatur in 1999 had an enrollment that was about 44 percent black, while five of the six Decatur students expelled in the prior year were black). Jackson pointed out he was invited by the students' parents and that he spoke with them, the kids, ministers and teachers before protesting the zero-tolerance severity of the punishment: "No one can survive zero tolerance," Jackson said. "We all need mercy and grace." Outside of Decatur, public support was largely against the School Board's decision but changed once a videotape of the incident surfaced filmed by a parent at the game. Broadcast on national TV news, it showed a melee that swept through one end of the grandstands, with kicking and punching, as some of the fighters tumbled over the rails. The game was stopped and players gawked at the fighting in the bleachers. Ed Boehm, the principal at MacArthur High School who attended the game, described it as a riot: "I feared for the safety of our people -- my parents, my students," Boehm said, referring to the crowd in the bleachers. "You had people pushed through bars, people covering little children so they wouldn't get hurt. It was violent." Jackson and his Rainbow PUSH Coalition organized marches that included hundreds of people bused in from outside the area, criticizing the school board for what Jackson said was unfairly harsh treatment of the boys over a fight. Jackson was arrested and detained briefly; however, charges were later dropped. School officials say the students involved in the fighting were known as truants, described three of them as "third-year freshmen", and noted that the seven students had missed a combined 350 days of high school. The students involved in the fight have since taken different paths in life: one having been sentenced to state prison for 10 years for a 2004 felony drug conviction; another having finished college (helped by a Rainbow PUSH scholarship); another working as a butcher; and a fourth being arrested for home invasion in 2009. Jesse Jackson was criticized for turning what could have been a legitimate criticism/discussion of the effects of "zero tolerance" policies into national debate by attempting to present the seven youths as victims of bigotry. ==Geography==