This Day in History: The barbaric Duluth lynchings of 1920 are a dark record of anti-black racial atrocities
The George Floyd protests sweeping the nation have metamorphosed into a movement opposing police brutality and systematic racism towards people of color, sex and gender, and in particular the African-American population. The Black Lives Matter revolution has brought a historical account of various atrocities that black people have endured over centuries – including slavery and the discriminatory 'Jim Crow' black codes – back into focus. While the country has put an end to any racist and discriminatory laws, tensions and violence against people of color persist even today. The majority population that falls into the criminal justice system comprises mostly black people, and inhumane practices of punishment, such as lynching or murder by a mob with no due process or rule of law, continues to be carried well into the 21st century.
In the 19th and 20th centuries alone, thousands of African-Americans were lynched by white mobs via hanging or torture. At least 4,742 people of color were reportedly lunched in the US between 1882 and 1968, and 99 percent of the time the perpetrators escaped unpunished, per BBC. Lynching was never deemed illegal until earlier this year when the House of Representatives passed a law making lynching a federal crime. Despite the implementation of the law, in the weeks since the George Floyd protests ensued there have been several reports of African-American people who have been victims of lynching. The most recent being 24-year-old Robert Fuller, whose body was found hanging from a tree in Palmdale. The police simply concluded that his death was a suicide, which has caused an uproar over social media, with users claiming that the young man had been lynched. An investigation into his death is still underway.
Exactly 100 years ago, a lynch mob comprising an estimated 5,000 white people, broke into the Duluth, Minnesota police station and seized six African American men in their custody. The men had been arrested on false charges of raping a white teenager. The mob dragged three men up the street and following a mock trial Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, and Isacc McGhie were 'convicted' without any evidence whatsoever. The crowd amassing men, women, and children cheered on as the three black men were brutally beaten and lynched, one after the other, by hanging them from a lampost. What's even more barbaric about the incident is that a graphic photograph of the lynching was later sold and circulated as postcards. This lynching became the "foulest blot to upon the city ever known in Duluth's history" as the Duluth Herald described the incident in 1920, which haunted the city for decades.
The collective violence was incited by a testimony from James Sullivan, and his companion Irene Tusken. Clayton, Jackson, and McGhie had been circus performers, traveling with John Robinson's Circus, and had coincidentally stopped to perform in Duluth, that night. The real facts behind what happened that night remain a mystery, but Sullivan and Tusken later claimed that a group of African American laborers employed in the circus had held the former a gunpoint and raped the latter. However, the family physician who examined Tusken following her claims, said he found no evidence of any sexual assault. Neither had Tusken mentioned any such incidents from her night out with Sullivan to her parents when she got home. After dropping Tusken off at her home, Sullivan arrived at the docks, where he was due to begin his overnight shift and spoke with his father about the alleged incident. It was only after their conversation that they contacted the police, which led to midnight arrests of the six men, who had been aboard the circus train bound for their next destination.
The Duluth lynching are a stark reminder of the anti-black violence and racial atrocities that the black community has had to endure. For over seven decades, Clayton, Jackson, and McGhie's bodies had remained buried in unmarked graves in a local cemetery and were only designated with a headstone in the early 1990s with the words “Deterred but not Defeated” etched on them.
Today, the site of their lynching is where the Clayton Jackson Mcghie Memorial stands. It is both a tribute to the three men as well as a site for ongoing educational efforts. The site sports frizes of Clayton, Jackson, and McGhie, beside an inscription that reads: An event has happened upon which it is difficult to speak and impossible to remain silent.” Since the day George Floyd died, protestors have gathered daily at the memorial site for peaceful protests.