Latest / Pionerd / [FROM THE ARCHIVES] The Day the Law Broke: The Duluth Lynchings and Their Legacy
Transcript
- Content Note: Before we begin, a brief note on today's episode. The story we are covering involves intense racial violence, a lawless mob, and details of a historic lynching. It contains descriptions of events that are deeply disturbing, but it is an essential chapter of our shared history that demands to be told accurately. Listener discretion is advised. Welcome to Pionerd, the Minnesota Edition. I'm Robert Thomas. Every day I bring you a story from Minnesota history that is novel, compelling, and hopefully a little surprising. Today is June 15. Let's get into it. On June 14, 1920 the John Robinson Traveling Circus train pulled into Duluth. The massive show moved across the state on a tight, corporate rail schedule. It arrived from a tour stop in Brainerd to pitch its tents at Thirty-Ninth Avenue West. This traveling show brought a sudden demographic shock to the white, northern shipping port. The business kept a strict racial split among its fifteen hundred workers. White staff performed under the big top, while Black men handled the dangerous manual work. These Black laborers were known as canvasmen. They came from southern cities to find grueling work moving tons of iron stakes and wet ropes under gas flares. Down on the lot by the local water plant, the final show ended late that night. According to statements given to police, nineteen-year-old Irene Tusken and eighteen-year-old James Sullivan walked behind the main tent perimeter following the final performance. They joined a small crowd of local youth watching the crew pack the heavy gear. The circus had to load the flatcars quickly to reach its next date in Virginia, Minnesota. Tusken went home after the teardown and said nothing to her family. Sullivan reported for his regular midnight shift at the Duluth ore docks. Later that night, Sullivan finally told his father about a late-night encounter on the dark grounds. The father called Police Chief John Murphy shortly after. He claimed that a group of Black canvasmen held the young couple at gunpoint and assaulted Tusken. The police did not wait for a medical report or a formal written statement. Based on nothing more than a late-night phone call, the police mobilized with immediate, overwhelming force. Before dawn, Chief Murphy took fifteen armed officers to the West Duluth railyard to block the train before departure. Officers boarded the crowded sleeper cars and forced the exhausted Black laborers out onto the gravel railbed. The police conducted a chaotic field identification under the dim light of handheld lanterns. Sullivan looked at the lines of men, but the dark conditions made visual proof highly unreliable. Officers searched the train for a silver revolver mentioned in the complaint but found no weapon. Despite the complete lack of identified physical evidence, police held numerous men without a warrant and marched several suspects straight to the Duluth city jail. Officers locked the men inside the brick police headquarters at the corner of Second Avenue East and Superior Street, deep within the busy downtown grid. During the morning of June 15, 1920, word of the arrests spread rapidly through the downtown grid. The rumor of a brutal assault gained traction across local mills and docks long before any facts were known. In those morning hours, the Tusken family physician, Dr. David Graham, examined Irene Tusken at her home. He found no clinical evidence of rape or physical trauma. This vital medical finding was completely ignored by local authorities. Furthermore, the Tusken family had thoroughly washed the young woman's garments before the doctor arrived, which permanently destroyed any potential forensic proof. Down at the police station, the net actually grew wider. Chief Murphy sent officers north to Virginia, Minnesota, to track down more circus workers. Police arrested Max Mason and William Miller, dragging them back to the Duluth cells to join the other suspects. Meanwhile, a local truck driver named Louis Dondino began to actively organize a mob on Superior Street. He used his commercial vehicle as a mobile megaphone platform, driving up and down the busy tracks. Dondino shouted out a direct invitation for citizens to join a necktie party at the police station. By late afternoon, the crowd outside the jail swelled from an inquisitive gathering into a massive, organized riot. Estimates by contemporary press and police logs placed the angry crowd between five thousand and ten thousand white citizens. Local leaders tried to intervene before the violence boiled over. Judge William Cant and a prominent Catholic priest physically stood on the jail steps to confront the crowd. They pleaded with the rioters to leave, urging them to let the legal system take its course. The mob completely ignored their words and pushed them aside. Officers inside the brick building initially attempted a minor tactical defense. They deployed tear gas and turned on high-pressure fire hoses from the windows to repel the first wave. The rioters fought through the water, using pocket knives to slice the police hoses to pieces on the pavement. Inside the headquarters at Second Avenue East, the defensive line collapsed entirely. Commissioner of Public Safety William F. Murnian arrived at the station but chose not to escalate force. Instead of protecting the prisoners, Murnian refused to authorize lethal resistance or allow his officers to use firearms to defend the building. He directed his police force to avoid actions that might provoke the crowd, justifying the decision by telling his men he feared the loss of white lives. This position forced the police to abandon the ground floor entirely. Officers retreated to the upper-level cell blocks, leaving the main entrance undefended. This surrender left the building completely vulnerable to the sea of rioters outside. The crowd began to collect heavy tools, moving with absolute confidence because they knew the police would not fire a single shot. Night fell over Superior Street as the mob advanced on the dark, quiet entrance. They salvaged structural timbers and heavy materials from nearby construction zones and local tracks to use as weapons. A barrage of heavy paving bricks shattered the front windows of the building. The crowd used these makeshift battering rams to slam into the main entry doors. Under the immense force, the locks shattered and the mob overran the indoor corridors. Rioters swarmed the upper-level cell blocks to hunt for the prisoners. The police had locked the circus suspects inside the cells, and the mob trapped all of them. According to contemporary press records, the mob did not execute the men immediately on the spot. They staged a crude mock trial right inside the jail corridors to determine who would die. The rioters held a chaotic interrogation of the prisoners, eventually pushing several of the men back into the cells because they deemed them less guilty. This illegal proceeding concluded when the crowd selected Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, and Isaac McGhie, declaring them guilty by acclamation. The crowd bound the arms of Clayton, Jackson, and McGhie with thick rope before dragging them out into the open air. A massive escort column of thousands of citizens formed on the pavement. The mob forced the three bound men exactly one block east from the breached jailhouse along the main street. They halted the march at an iron electric light pole located at the busy intersection of First Street and Second Avenue East. The unique topography of the Duluth hillside created a natural amphitheater at this corner. Thousands of onlookers lined the steep slopes and embankments, giving everyone a clear view of the structural light pole. The rioters stripped the young men to their waists and prepared the ropes over the iron lamppost rigging. The execution began in front of the cheering crowd, unfolding with immense, prolonged brutality. The mob hoisted Isaac McGhie, Elmer Jackson, and Elias Clayton up into the night air as the hanging turned chaotic and drawn out. Rioters repeatedly adjusted the ropes to ensure the executions carried out in full view of the intersection. While the men hung from the pole, members of the crowd actively assaulted the victims during their final moments of strangulation, maximizing the torment before the thousands of onlookers. Once the executions concluded, Clayton’s body fell onto the gravel street. The crowd showed absolutely no shame or fear of legal retribution. Drivers maneuvered their vehicle headlights to create a high-contrast illumination field around the light pole. This bright light allowed the mob to intentionally pose the limbs of the deceased. A local commercial photographer stepped forward with his camera to capture the scene. Dozens of white onlookers smiled and jostled for position in the frame, creating an image that would soon be sold openly as a souvenir postcard. In the judicial wake of the violence, a grand jury issued thirty-seven formal indictments against white mob members for murder or rioting. Local political resistance ensured only eight men ever faced a trial. Zero white individuals were convicted for the actual murders of Clayton, Jackson, or McGhie. Only three men served short prison terms strictly for the charge of rioting. This complete failure of justice caused immediate terror throughout the city. Many Black families packed their belongings that week and permanently fled across the state line to Superior, Wisconsin, or moved south to Minneapolis. Conversely, the state applied maximum legal pressure to the Black victims. An all-white jury tried Max Mason for rape based entirely on circumstantial testimony. He received a grueling sentence of seven to thirty years at Stillwater State Prison. The State Board of Pardons finally paroled Mason in 1925, but they attached a strict exile clause. He gained his freedom under the absolute condition of permanent banishment from the state of Minnesota. This absolute collapse of courtroom justice forced a brilliant St. Paul activist named Nellie Francis to launch a fierce, targeted political campaign to rewrite state law. Working from the state capital, Nellie Francis spearheaded the movement to transform the grief of Duluth into a pioneering structural weapon. She drafted and aggressively lobbied House File Number 785 through a resistant state legislature. Her fierce campaign culminated on April twenty-one, 1921, with the passage of the Minnesota Anti-Lynching Law. This groundbreaking statute established immediate civil liability, allowing a victim's heirs to sue the county for up to seventy-five hundred dollars in damages. Crucially, the law also empowered the Governor to strip any negligent sheriff or jailer of their office if they surrendered a prisoner to a mob without a fight. Decades later, the city of Duluth finally broke its long, institutional silence. In 2003, citizens dedicated a massive bronze and stone memorial directly across the street from the old lamppost site. The walls bear the likeness of Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, and Isaac McGhie alongside the words, "Impossible to remain silent." This sacred community space anchors the physical memory of their lives right in the downtown core. The long legal arc finally reached closure on June twelve, 2020, when the state issued its first posthumous pardon to officially clear Max Mason's name. Stand on those shoulders. This has been Pionerd, the Minnesota Edition. I'm Robert Thomas. Today was June 15. On this date in 1920, the absolute worst of our state's history met its match in the fierce resolve of Nellie Francis. Out of the tragedy on the Duluth gravel, she mobilized a historic coalition to engrave strict legal accountability into Minnesota statute—a shield for the vulnerable that stands to this day. We honor the young men whose names are now cast in bronze on that Duluth hillside, and we honor the woman who rebuilt our laws with her own hands to shield the vulnerable. This is what it means to pioneer. Tomorrow on Pionerd, we fast-forward to 1999 to unpack the dramatic St. Paul capture of Kathleen Soliah. Living under the alias Sarah Jane Olson, this fugitive and presumed member of the Symbionese Liberation Army evaded authorities for twenty-five years following an attempted police car bombing, until an appearance on America's Most Wanted brought her underground history to a sudden end. To ensure you never miss a story from our past, please subscribe to Pionerd wherever you listen to podcasts. If today's episode moved you, please leave a review so others can find us, and share this story with someone who cares about the deep, unfiltered, and honest history of Minnesota. Thank you for your support. We really appreciate it. See you tomorrow.