# Duluth Lynchings — June 15, 1920 **Type**: Extrajudicial killing; racial terror; state non-action **Decade node**: Decade 9 (1920s) — Volstead, Farmer-Labor, and the KKK **Half-Truth Report**: Stage 8 (Persecution) and Stage 10 (Denial) — explicitly conceded --- ## The Event On June 15, 1920, a mob of several thousand people (estimates range from 5,000 to 10,000) gathered at the Duluth city jail. The John Robinson Circus had stopped in Duluth; following an unsubstantiated rape accusation against Black circus workers, six Black men were taken into custody. The mob broke into the jail. Three men were dragged out and lynched at the corner of First Street and Second Avenue East in downtown Duluth: - **Elias Clayton** - **Elmer Jackson** - **Isaac McGhie** Three additional Black men in custody were rescued from the mob before they could be killed. The circus performers' rape accusation was subsequently investigated and found unsubstantiated — a subsequent medical examination of the alleged victim found no evidence of assault. Duluth police stood down or were overwhelmed. No effective intervention occurred. ## Legal Aftermath **Criminal accountability**: A St. Louis County grand jury indicted 37 people — 12 for first-degree murder and 25 for rioting — but **no one was ever convicted of murder**. Only three men were convicted at all, each receiving roughly one year: **Louis Dondino** and **Carl Hammerberg** for rioting, and **Gilbert Henry Stephenson** for inciting a riot. Separately, two of the accused Black circus workers were tried for the alleged rape: **William Miller** was acquitted, and **Max Mason** was convicted in November 1920 and sentenced to up to 30 years despite the absence of physical evidence. Mason served about five years and was paroled on the condition that he leave Minnesota and never return. On **June 12, 2020**, the Minnesota Board of Pardons — Gov. Tim Walz, Chief Justice Lorie Gildea, and Attorney General Keith Ellison, unanimously — granted Mason a **posthumous pardon, the first in Minnesota history**, 100 years after the case and 18 days after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. **[WTFism]** Minnesota's first-ever posthumous pardon corrected the wrongful conviction of one of the surviving accused; the murders of Clayton, Jackson, and McGhie produced no murder conviction in 1920 and none since. **Legislative response**: Minnesota's **Anti-Lynching Law of 1921** — [MN Laws 1921 ch. 401](https://www.revisor.mn.gov/laws/1921/0/Session+Law/Chapter/401/pdf/) (H.F. 785), signed by Governor J.A.O. Preus on April 21, 1921 — was a direct legislative response. It was drafted and championed by **Nellie Griswold Francis**, a Black St. Paul clubwoman and suffragist; W.E.B. Du Bois traveled to St. Paul and Duluth to build support for it. The law authorized removal of police officers who failed to protect prisoners in their custody and let the dependents of a lynching victim recover damages of up to $7,500. Minnesota was the 15th state to enact anti-lynching legislation. The law was necessary because Duluth's officials had just demonstrated what discretionary non-action looked like. ## Context: The Selective Capacity Exhibit The Duluth lynchings are the clearest single demonstration in Minnesota history of the state's selective-capacity doctrine. The Commission of Public Safety (1917–1919) had mobilized 7,700+ Home Guard troops to suppress words — "disloyal" speech among German immigrants, NPL organizing, labor meetings. That same state apparatus produced no effective response when thousands gathered to lynch three men in a city jail. The capacity existed. The political will did not. This contrast is documented in *The Instrument No One Will Name* (Section III) and is the load-bearing exhibit for the selective-state-capacity thesis running through the vault's analytical framework. ## Half-Truth Report Connection The vault's *The State That Could Not See Itself: Ten Essays on Minnesota and the Ten Stages of Genocide* explicitly concedes the Duluth lynchings without contest or comparison (Stage 8 Persecution, fn. 8-2; Stage 10 Denial, fn. 10-1): > "the 1920 Duluth lynchings — gravest, completed harms, conceded without comparison" The **Half-Truth Report Gap** is not in the vault's analysis — it is in the official institutional record. Minnesota's Truth Council (EO 26-05, signed March 25, 2026) was stood up in weeks to document harm to one immigration-era cohort. The Clayton Jackson McGhie Memorial in Duluth was dedicated in 2003 — 83 years after the event — through private fundraising and community effort, not a state commission. No state-commissioned truth process has addressed the Duluth lynchings in 106 years. ## Memorial The **Clayton Jackson McGhie Memorial** was dedicated September 7, 2003, at the corner of First Street and Second Avenue East in Duluth — the location of the lynchings. Sculptor Carla Stetson. The three bronze reliefs of Clayton, Jackson, and McGhie are inscribed with their names and the words: "An event has happened upon which it is difficult to speak and impossible to remain silent." ## Primary Sources / Links - MNHS Duluth Lynchings: https://www.mnhs.org/duluthlynchings - Michael Fedo, *The Lynchings in Duluth* (1979; rev. ed. 2000, MNHS Press) — standard popular history - Clayton Jackson McGhie Memorial: https://claytonjacksonmcghie.org - Minnesota Anti-Lynching Law (1921): [MN Laws 1921 ch. 401](https://www.revisor.mn.gov/laws/1921/0/Session+Law/Chapter/401/pdf/) (H.F. 785), signed Apr. 21, 1921; author Nellie Griswold Francis — MNHS *Afterwards*: https://www.mnhs.org/duluthlynchings/afterwards - Max Mason posthumous pardon (June 12, 2020 — Minnesota's first): MN Attorney General — https://www.ag.state.mn.us/Office/Communications/2020/06/12_MaxMason.asp ; MPR News — https://www.mprnews.org/story/2020/06/12/minn-grants-states-first-posthumous-pardon-to-max-mason - Cross-ref: `Architects/Gov_Preus_JAO.md` (signed the 1921 Anti-Lynching Law); `Agendas/Nativist_Protestant_Network_1920s.md` - *The State That Could Not See Itself* — Stage 8 fn. 8-2; Stage 10 fn. 10-1 #Acts_Amendments_and_Antecedents