Duluth Lynching

On the warm summer night of June 14, Irene Tusken, age nineteen, and James Sullivan, eighteen, went to a circus in Duluth. At the end of the evening the pair walked to the rear of the main tent. Nobody is sure what happend next, the next morning Duluth Police Chief John Murphy received a call from James father saying six black circus workers had held the pair at gunpoint and then raped Irene Tusken. Dr Graham a family Dr. said there showed no sighs of rape. That evening 1,000-10,000 white people mobbed and were waiting for the six black men to come out of jail. Bricks, pipes and heavy timbers and they got into the jail. They pulled six black guys from there cells. After a fake trial Jackson, Clayton, and McGhie were guilty and taken one block to a light pole on the corner of the street. a few people tried to get to them but the police were there with the men. Eventually they were beaten and then lynched (hung to death). The Minnesota National Guard arrived the next morning to secure Duluth and protect the three surviving black prisoners, and 10 additional black suspects, so they moved them to St. Louis County Jail.