For the most part, voters will vote the issues and/or the candidate who best serves their own interests, or at least the candidate they think will best serve their interests.

As I said in another topic, there is no question that some American voters will not vote for Obama because of his skin color, but I believe the majority of voters of both parties will vote either party-line, or issues, and not race.

In terms of racial tolerance and equality, I hope we are a better country now than we were a hundred years ago.

It wasn't America's first riot, and certainly not the last.

But this one was in the hometown of Abraham Lincoln, the president who helped end slavery.

Today, Lincoln's city — where Barack Obama launched his campaign to become the first black president — is finally commemorating the events that erupted 100 years ago this month.

At the time, even respectable citizens came out to gawk at the smoldering rubble and a body hanging from a tree.

"His feet dangling and within reach ... the men and boys played with the corpse by swinging it back and forth against the building to hear the dull thud," a local newspaper reported.

Outraged activists helped form the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in response to this "race war in the north."

"It wasn't in Mississippi, it was in Illinois. That jarred people," said Roger Wilkins, publisher of the NAACP's The Crisis magazine. "Add the fact that it's where Lincoln is buried. You have a lot of symbolism. Lincoln was a live memory to a lot of people."

Then the riot simply faded into history.

Nationally, it was overshadowed by larger riots in East St. Louis and in Tulsa, Okla.

And for generations, it was studiously ignored in Springfield.