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"For most Minnesotans, the intervening years since the lynchings would obliterate their collective memory, leaving a diminishing handful to treat it, like all dirty secrets, as something best left unspoken."
– William Green, Associate History Professor, Augsburg College
The Duluth Lynchings:
Little-Remembered Minnesota Tragedy
When reflecting on particularly horrendous expressions of racism in American history, relatively few people today think about the northern United States. Many people focus on the “Old South” — states like Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia. Although it is generally understood that racial unrest and conflict did exist elsewhere, this knowledge is usually general and abstract. Few people know that one of the most heinous instances of senseless, malicious brutality against blacks in American history actually happened in the North: Duluth, Minnesota to be exact.
 On June 14, 1920, a traveling circus brought Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, Isaac McGhie, and other young black men to Duluth for a one-night performance. All three men were in their early twenties and worked with the circus as hired help. That same night Irene Tusken, 19, and James Sullivan, 18, went to the circus. The actual events that night are sketchy, but the next day it was claimed that six black circus workers had threatened the couple at gunpoint and raped Tusken. Though little to no evidence was garnered, Clayton, Jackson, McGhie, and three other black workers were rounded up and arrested by the Duluth Police and held in the city jail.
Word of the alleged rape spread quickly, and on the night of June 15, a mob of thousands of Duluth townspeople formed. The police had been ordered not to use force against them, so in true lynch mob form they forced their way into the jail. In a mock trial travesty, Clayton, Jackson, and McGhie were declared guilty and taken one block to the corner of First Street and Second Avenue East. Though a few people tried to dissuade the mob, the three men were severely beaten and finally hanged to death from a light pole. After a rather tardy show of force, the Duluth Police were able to intervene and save the lives of the other three prisoners.
 The Minnesota National Guard came the next day to restore order and protect the three surviving black prisoners, but irreparable damage had been done. Black residents of Duluth felt unsafe in their hometown. Over time, a significant number chose to leave the city for good. Newspapers all over the country were appalled that such a horrible thing had happened in a Northern state. Justice for the atrocity appeared nonexistent in the following weeks, as only three people involved in the lynching received any type of incarceration – and that for rioting, not murder. Duluth stood as a city plagued by shame and marked by injustice.
The lights in this dark section of Minnesota’s history are twofold. First, a local Duluth chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was formed in 1920 as a result of the ordeal. Second, after much work by the black community including Nellie Francis, a social activist from St. Paul, an anti-lynching bill was created and signed into Minnesota law in 1921.
It is important for us to ponder this event, not only for awareness of this blight on American history. We should also reflect on our general unawareness of this historical event and what that may imply. Could there be a reason that one of the most atrocious hate crimes in the United States that involved thousands would be relatively unknown today, even by many Minnesotans? Perhaps remembering the past can help us understand our present – and the future.
If you would like more information about the Duluth lynchings, please visit the Minnesota Historical Society website on the Duluth lynching. You may also read the book “The Lynchings in Duluth,” by Michael Fedo (2000).
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