I requested to be a friend of Edith on this new site in order to find out how early her people were in Springfield, Illinois, since there were 2 black papers in the town in the 1890s; both I believe are part of GenealogyBank's AA newspaper collection. (Illinois Record & State Capital) I cannot tell from these clippings where they were taken from, but I am guessing the Defender, although the one that mentions "local youths" in the headline lists men from south & eastern Pennsylvania so it may be the Tribune. And, since they are mentioning Nashville, there may be related news in the Nashville Globe, which is not digitized.

As an aside, there are also a number of oral histories of blacks from Springfield online and one that I downloaded mentions Dr. Lee a few times.