DULUTH, Minn. � A masked and socially distant Gov. Tim Walz got a tour of Duluth's painful history Monday morning, exactly 100 years after a white mob lynched three black men, Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson and Isaac McGhie, on a downtown street corner.
Though the city and board that oversees the Clayton Jackson McGhie Memorial had long planned for a slate of events and up to 10,000 visitors, COVID-19 threw a wrench in those plans.
But history is history, so Walz, accompanied by his wife and daughter, met Carl Crawford, Duluth's human rights officer, outside the historic police station that was broken into on June 15, 1920, when Clayton, Jackson and McGhie were pulled from their cells.
At the site of the memorial, Crawford told Walz that the bronze eyes of the reliefs are hollow, which he says was done to represent the men's souls. Afterward, Walz was greeted by Duluth Mayor Emily Larson at City Hall where he is meeting with community members.
The governor's visit came three weeks after the death of George Floyd, a black man killed in the custody of Minneapolis police. Derek Chauvin, the white officer who kept his knee on Floyd's neck for eight minutes while he pleaded for breath and faded into unconsciousness, faces second-degree murder charges.
Floyd's death has become a rallying cry for protesters across the country, spurring calls for major criminal justice reforms and the defunding of police.
The Duluth memorial was constructed in 2003 through a fundraiser organized by local activists, who urged the community to acknowledge the city's shameful history after decades of keeping the lynchings quiet. In all, six circus workers were accused of raping a white woman, Irene Tusken, though her doctor found no evidence of an assault.
On Friday, the Minnesota Board of Pardons granted its first posthumous pardon to Max Mason, a fellow circus worker who was convicted, without evidence, of the rape of Tusken. Backers of the pardon called him a "scapegoat" to excuse the actions of the lynch mob.
