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University of Minnesota

Kathryn A. Martin Library

The Lynching of Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson and Isaac McGhie

Sources on the lynching and work to commemorate the victims.

Overview

As stated on the Clayton Jackson McGhie Memorial, Inc. website:

"On the evening of June 15, 1920, three black men, wrongly accused of raping a white woman, were abducted from the Duluth, MN, City Jail. A mob numbering between five and ten thousand people savagely beat and tortured these three young black men, then hung them from a lamppost in the middle of Duluth's downtown. The grim spectacle of the mob posing with the lynched men was then captured by a photographer, and then circulated as a postcard. At a time in America when the lynching of black men was all too common, it was widely agreed to be the most heinous lynching of 1920. Until recently, this event has been largely forgotten. The names of the three men, Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson and Isaac McGhie were almost forgotten as well."

Sources Online

Available at the UMD Archives

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