On June 15, 1920, three African-American circus workers, Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, and Isaac McGhie, suspects in an assault case, were taken from the jail and lynched by a White mob of thousands in Duluth, Minnesota.

The African-American community in the city was small, with a total population of 495, but a number had been hired by US Steel, the major employer in the area.

[4] In September 1918, a Finnish immigrant named Olli Kinkkonen was lynched in Duluth, allegedly for dodging military service in World War I, which the United States had recently entered.

[5] During and immediately following World War I, a large population of blacks began the Great Migration out of the agrarian South to the industrial North to escape racial violence and to gain more opportunities for work, education, and voting.

[6] The period after World War I was disruptive in the United States, as numerous veterans sought to re-enter the job market and society.

Racial antagonism erupted in 1919 as race riots of whites against blacks in numerous cities across the U.S.; it was called the Red Summer of 1919.

[citation needed] On June 14, 1920, the John Robinson Circus arrived in Duluth for a free parade and a one-night performance.

[citation needed] In the early morning of June 15, Duluth police chief John Murphy received a call from James Sullivan's father, saying six black circus workers had held his son and girlfriend at gunpoint and then raped and robbed Irene Tusken.

Chief Murphy lined up all 150 or so roustabouts, food service workers, and props-men on the side of the tracks, and asked Sullivan and Tusken to identify their attackers.

The police arrested six black men as suspects in connection with the rape and robbery and held them in custody in the city jail.

[4][additional citation(s) needed] Newspapers printed articles about the alleged rape; rumors spread in the white community about it, including that Tusken was dying from her injuries.

The mob used heavy timbers, bricks, and rails to break down doors and windows,[4] pulling the six black men from their cells.

The Chicago Evening Post wrote: "This is a crime of a Northern state, as black and ugly as any that has brought the South in disrepute.

[4] Two days later, on June 17, Judge William Cant and the grand jury had a difficult time identifying the lead mob members.

Three men: Louis Dondino, Carl Hammerberg, and Gilbert Stephenson were convicted of rioting; none served more than 15 months in prison.

He and his wife Nellie Francis continued to work after the trial on anti-lynching legislation, which the state of Minnesota passed in April 1921.

The Clayton Jackson McGhie Memorial was designed and sculpted by Carla J. Stetson, in collaboration with editor and writer Anthony Peyton-Porter.

The final speaker at the ceremony was Warren Read, the great-grandson of one of the most prominent leaders of the lynch mob: It was a long-held family secret, and its deeply buried shame was brought to the surface and unraveled.

My son will continue to be raised in an environment of tolerance, understanding and humility, now with even more pertinence than before.Read has written a memoir exploring his learning about his great-grandfather's role in the lynching, as well his decision to find and connect with the descendants of Elmer Jackson, one of the men killed that night.

[17] The first verse of the 1965 song "Desolation Row" by Bob Dylan references the lynchings in Duluth: They're selling postcards of the hanging They're painting the passports brown The beauty parlor is filled with sailors The circus is in town.