Qualla: Duluth Lynchings

Duluth Lynchings: Introduction

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit The Duluth Herald, Public domain. Three bronze figures stand at the corner of First Street and Second Avenue East in Duluth, Minnesota. They represent Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, and Isaac McGhie -- young Black men who were alive on the evening of June 15, 1920, and dead before midnight, murdered by a mob that numbered in the thousands. The men were circus workers, part of the crew for the John Robinson Circus, which had rolled into town the day before for a one-night show. They were accused of a crime that likely never happened. They were killed on a street that shoppers and office workers walk along today. The memorial was dedicated in 2003. The lynchings remain the most widely documented instance of anti-Black racial violence in Minnesota's history.

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Image: The Duluth Herald | Public domain

Duluth Lynchings: The Circus Comes to Town

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. On June 14, 1920, the John Robinson Circus arrived in Duluth for a free parade and a single evening performance. Two white teenagers, Irene Tusken, nineteen, and James Sullivan, eighteen, attended the show and ended up behind the big top, watching Black workers dismantle the mena...

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Image: Public domain

Duluth Lynchings: A City Turns Violent

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. Newspapers printed the allegations. Rumors inflated them: word spread through white neighborhoods that Tusken was dying from her injuries. By evening, a mob estimated at between one thousand and ten thousand men had gathered outside the jail. The commissioner of public safety, Wi...

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Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Duluth Lynchings: A Law, a Pardon, and a Song

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. Minnesota passed anti-lynching legislation in April 1921, and no lynchings have been recorded in the state since. But justice for the victims came slowly, if at all. Max Mason, a Black circus co-worker of the three murdered men, was convicted of rape and sentenced to thirty years...

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Image: Public domain

Duluth Lynchings: Bronze Witnesses on First Street

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. Residents of Duluth spent years working toward a permanent memorial. The Clayton Jackson McGhie Memorial, designed and sculpted by Carla J. Stetson in collaboration with writer Anthony Peyton-Porter, was dedicated on October 10, 2003. The three bronze statues stand across the str...

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Image: Public domain

Duluth Lynchings: One Hundred Years Later

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. On June 15, 2020, the centennial of the lynchings, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz visited the memorial and proclaimed the date Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, and Isaac McGhie Commemoration Day. Three weeks earlier, George Floyd had been murdered by a Minneapolis police officer, and W...

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Image: Public domain