The Duluth lynchings

On 14 June 1920 a travelling circus came to Duluth. A white teenager claimed that six Black workers had assaulted a young woman. A doctor who examined her that night found no evidence of an assault, but police had already arrested six men.

The next evening a crowd estimated in the thousands surrounded the police station on Superior Street. Officers had been ordered not to use their guns. The mob broke in, held a mock trial in the street, and lynched Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson and Isaac McGhie from a light pole at First Street and Second Avenue East.

A grand jury indicted thirty-seven men. Eight were tried and three were convicted of rioting; none was convicted of murder. Of the men originally arrested, one was convicted of rape on the same discredited accusation and served four years. Duluth was not the South - Minnesota had fewer than 500 Black residents in the city - and the lynchings are a reminder that racial terror was a national practice. Minnesota passed an anti-lynching law the following year, after lobbying by the activist Nellie Francis. A memorial to the three men was built across from the site in 2003.