Lynching in America / Lynching in Duluth

Marker Text: On the night of June 15, 1920, Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, and Isaac McGhie, three young African American men in their early 20’s, were lynched on this site by a mob of white Duluth residents. The three men were in town working with a traveling circus when two white teenagers falsely claimed that six Black circus workers assaulted them and raped a local white woman. Without any physical evidence of a crime, six Black men were arrested and held in the old Duluth jail located one block away on Superior Street. During this era of Black migration, many white workers in Duluth and other Northern cities resented the presence of Black workers. Although Duluth’s Black population in 1920 was less than 1 percent, racial tension was high. As sensational reports of the accusations circulated, white residents were incited to rage and mob vengeance. A mob of at least 5,000 broke into the jail, and kidnapped Elias, Elmer, and Isaac. The men were stripped, tortured, dragged, and hanged from a lamppost on this spot in front of a crowd of an estimated 10,000 people. Members of the mob smiled and posed for photographs with their bodies that were later sold as postcards. The Minnesota National Guard arrived the next morning to secure the area and to guard the surviving Black men, but no one was ever arrested or convicted for the lynchings. Elias, Elmer, and Isaac would lie buried in unmarked graves for 70 years in nearby Park Hill Cemetery.