Over the years, the horror of June 15, 1920, when three black men were lynched by a white mob in Duluth, faded away behind a “collective amnesia,” says author Michael Fedo. Faded away, at least, in the memories of Duluth’s white community.
In the 1970s, when Fedo began researching what would become The Lynchings in Duluth, the first detailed accounting of the night’s events, he met resistance from witnesses who were still alive. “All of them said, gee, why are you dredging this up again? All of them except the African American community in Duluth. It was part of their oral history, and all of those families knew of this event,” Fedo recalls.
On that late spring night, 100 years ago, a crowd estimated at 5,000 people smashed their way into the Duluth police station and seized six African American men who had been arrested in connection with the alleged crime of raping a white teenager. After a mock trial in which three of them—Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson and Isaac McGhie—were “convicted,” a crowd of men, women and children cheered as they were beaten and lynched, one by one. Photos of the macabre aftermath were later sold as postcards, while the national press reported on the incident with dismay.
For seven decades, their bodies remained in unmarked graves in a local cemetery until they were designated with proper markings in the early 1990s– accompanied by the words “Deterred but not Defeated.” The site of their deaths is now home to the Clayton Jackson McGhie Memorial, both a standing tribute to the three men and the site of ongoing educational efforts. It bears an inscription etched next friezes of Clayton, Jackson and McGhie: “An event has happened upon which it is difficult to speak and impossible to remain silent.”
Protesters have gathered daily at the memorial in recent weeks to protest the killing of George Floyd, another tragedy in Minnesota that elicited a nationwide reaction. On Monday night, artists gathered to paint muralsof Floyd, Breonna Taylor—who was shot in her Louisville home on March 13— and a Black Power salute.
Treasure Jenkins, a board member with the memorial, said the group wanted to provide those communities feeling anger and frustration with a “safe platform in which to express their feelings, express their frustration, and have a vision for creating a different world.”
The descent into collective violence had begun just the night before, when Irene Tusken and her companion, James Sullivan, had rendezvoused at the traveling John Robinson Circus during its brief stop in Duluth. What happened behind the circus’ tents that night will never be fully known, but the pair later claimed that a group of African American laborers employed by the circus had held Sullivan at gunpoint and raped Tusken. According to newspaper reports and notes from a private investigator, however,the family physician who examined Tusken said he found no evidence of the assault, nor had Tusken mentioned to her parents that anything was amiss when she got home that night.