The Duluth Disgrace.
Type of event: Lynchings
Location: Duluth; St. Louis County; Minnesota; United States
Citation:
Minneapolis Journal, June 17, 1920, page 18.
“The Duluth Disgrace”
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The Duluth Disgrace
The Duluth mob that lynched three Negroes, one of them perhaps innocent,
has put an ineffaceable stain on the name of Minnesota.
It was the color of
the three prisoners that made them victims of the mob. Had they been white,
they might have been the objects of reprobation for the crime with which they
were charged–but they would no doubt have been left to the calm processes
of the law.
The sudden flaming up of racial passion, which is the reproach of
the South, may also occur, as we now learn in the bitterness of humiliation in
Minnesota.
This is the first lynching in Minnesota in twenty years, and the
very first lynching of Negroes. In fact, only two lynchings are recorded in the
whole history of the State.
It would appear that the civil authorities at
Duluth fought stoutly to prevent the crime the mob was bent on committing.
Whether they fought with good judgment may be a question. The order not to fire
on the mob, if given as the press accounts say, may have prevented the loss of
human life. But would it not have been better that a few of the crazed
criminals who sought to take into their own hands the administration of justice
should fall than that this blot on the fair escutcheon of Minnesota should have
been permitted? One man of stout heart has been known to balk a mob of its
prey.
But the damage is done. What now remains is to punish the men who
undertook to usurp the powers of court, judge, jury and executioner. No time
has been lost in setting the machinery in motion. We can only record the
earnest hope that nothing will be left undone to bring the lynch law murderers
to justice.
Duluth and St. Louis county as least owe it to the rest of the
State to demonstrate that those who invoke lynch law, those who participate in
mob rule, do so at the peril of swift condemnation and adequate punishment.