On the night of June 15, 1920, a white mob in Duluth, Minnesota, dragged three African-American circus workers from jail, Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, and Isaac McGhie, and lynched them in front of thousands. The men had been falsely accused, without credible evidence, of raping a white teenage girl.
It all started when the John Robinson Circus rolled into town. That night, 19-year-old Irene Tusken and 18-year-old James Sullivan attended the show. Later, Sullivan told his father a horrific tale: that he and Tusken had been held at gunpoint by six Black circus workers, and that Tusken had been raped. The story spread quickly.
The next morning, Tusken was examined by a local physician, Dr. David Graham. He found no physical evidence of rape. No bruises. No injuries. Nothing that supported Sullivan’s claim. Still, the police arrested six Black men from the circus based solely on the teens’ accusation and held them in custody in the city jail. The newspapers ran with the story anyway, printing sensational headlines and stirring public outrage.
By evening, a mob numbering in the thousands surrounded the Duluth city jail. The doors were battered down, and the mob pulled all six Black men from their cells. After a hasty mock “trial”, Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, and Isaac McGhie were declared guilty and taken one block to a light pole on the corner of First Street and Second Avenue East. A few tried to dissuade the mob, but their pleas fell on deaf ears. The three men were beaten and then lynched, first Isaac McGhie, then Elmer Jackson, and lastly Elias Clayton. Photos of their hanging bodies would later be turned into postcards and sold for 50 cents.
Eventually, the bodies were cut down and taken to a local funeral home. According to historical accounts, the men were buried in unmarked graves in Duluth’s Park Hill Cemetery.
As grotesque as it sounds, lynchings during this era were not only tolerated by many white communities, they were often treated as public spectacles. In some cases, including Duluth, people took photographs of the mutilated bodies and turned them into postcards. Vendors sold them. Some even cut off fingers or ears from the victims and kept them as souvenirs. The lynching of Black Americans was not just an act of terror, it became, for some, a business and a form of entertainment.
No one was ever held accountable for the murders. Thirty-seven indictments were issued, but only three white men were convicted, of rioting, not murder. They served less than 15 months. No one was charged with lynching Elias, Elmer, or Isaac.
In the wake of the lynchings, there was a push for change. Thanks to pressure from activists like William and Nellie Francis, Minnesota passed an anti-lynching law in 1921, which aimed to hold law enforcement accountable for failing to protect prisoners. While no more lynchings have been recorded in the state since, that law was quietly repealed in 1984.
In 2003, after more than eight decades of silence, the city of Duluth finally honored Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, and Isaac McGhie with a memorial. Today, three bronze statues stand near the spot where they were brutally murdered, a reminder of lives stolen not just by a mob, but by a lie.
Source:
https://www.mnopedia.org/thing/clayton-jackson-mcghie-memorial-duluth
https://www.mnhs.org/duluthlynchings/afterwards
https://www.mnhs.org/duluthlynchings/documents/negroes-did-not-rape-girl
