Infuriated Mob Takes Three Negroes from Police Station Hanging Them to Light Pole.
Type of event: Lynchings
Location: Duluth; St. Louis County; Minnesota; United States
Document date:
Document type: Newspaper(s)
Documents: Infuriated Mob Takes Three Negroes from Police Station Hanging Them to Light Pole.
Citation:
Duluth Herald, June 16, 1920, page 1, 14.
“Infuriated Mob Takes Three Negroes from Police Station Hanging Them to Light Pole”
Image text
Infuriated Mob Takes Three Negores
From Police
Station Hanging Them To Light Pole
Thousands Gather in Streets Tuesday Evening,
Force Way Into Jail, Smash Bolts and Bars and
Drag Negroes to Their Doom.
Duluth had the first lynching in it’s history last night.
A
mob estimated anywhere from 1,000 to 10,000 bent on avenging an assault on a
young West Duluth girl, lynched three Negroes held as suspects, two of whom, it
is claimed, had confessed to the crime and the third who was being held as a
material witness, hanging them to an electric light pole in front of the Shrine
auditorium. The mob wrecked police headquarters and wounded several policemen
in taking the Negroes.
The three Negroes whose dead bodies are today at
Grady & Horgan’s undertaking rooms are Isaac McGhee, age 20, Elmer
Jackson, age 20 and Elias Clayton, age 19. McGhee is the only one of the trio
who, to the last, claimed innocence of the crime.
The gathering of the mob
started early in the evening. It is claimed that a truck on which was the label
“city truck” came from the western end of the city shortly after 7
o’clock carrying a gang of young men. Attached to the truck and dragging
behind was a long rope. The truck traveled through the streets slowly while
those on the truck shouted “Come on fellows, join the necktie
party.”
Men and boys grabbed the rope and marched behind the truck
through the street, finally stopping opposite police headquarters on the upper
side. The crowd gathered rapidly. Truck loads of others joined, many of these
truck loads coming from the western end of the city. The truck riders coming
later made no demonstration. Apparently no attempt was made to stop them.
Youth Incites Crowd.
When the first truck stopped a young man, whose age was judged at about 20
year, got up on the top of the truck and began to address the crowd. His talk
is said to have been exceptionally inciting. He told the crowd that the girl
who was attacked by the Negroes laid in the hospital at death’s door and
called on the crowd for vengeance.
The police barricaded the door of police
headquarters and called every man off duty to report. A reserve of twenty-five
policemen was at the station when the mob began its assault on the jail.
Sergeant Oscar Olson was in charge. The police were holding the fort, both
front and back, when the crowd flanked them by climbing the fire escape between
the city hall and police headquarters and breaking in through the windows.
Before the police knew what was taking place several hundred men had forced
their way in and begun the process of battering the jail.
Fire hose turned
on the mob by the fire department, which was called out to disperse the mob,
apparently only added to the fury. The mob took the hose out of the hands of
the firemen and turned the water on the police. Hundreds of feet of the fire
hose was destroyed.
Bricks, paving blocks, rails and heavy timbers were used
in battering the way into the jail. After breaking into the main cell house the
mob tore loose the locks on several of the cells. Finding only one of the
Negroes downstairs the mob went upstairs to the boys department where the other
five were being held.
Street saws were used when it was found that the
battering ram was of no avail. Two steel bars holding the big door were sawed
through. This process was too slow for the mob, which took another battering
ram and broke through the wall, making a hole three feet wide by two feet high.
The wall at this point is sixteen inches thick. Through this hole the terrified
Negroes were dragged.
Negroes Dragged to Doom.
The Negroes were taken up the hill to First street, following a mock
trial held just outside of the cell room.
McGhie was the first to be strung
up. He begged for mercy, stoutly declaring his innocence. Father W. J. Powers
and Father P. J. Maloney pleaded with the crowd to allow the law to take
it’s course, but were greeted with hoots and yells and with the remarks
“remember the girl” and “lynch him.”
The first of
the Negroes to hang, Isaac McGhie, tell to the ground when the rope broke, the
mob members nearest to the victim kicking him and jumping on him until he was
about dead. Elmer Jackson, the next to die, met death calmly. He threw some
dice to the crowd with the remark that he would not need them where he was
going. The crowd cheered during his dying convulsions. When dead he was
lowered in within a few feet of the ground and left hanging, stripped of most of
his clothes and covered with blood.
Begs Mercy; Gets Brutality.
Ellias Clayton, the third Negro, who had witnessed the hanging of the other
two, wept and begged for mercy, but there was no mercy in the crowd and the was
quickly hoisted high and, with hands lifted in supplication, received the kicks
and blows aimed at him as his body dangled against the pole. One young man,
who, it was claimed, was the brother of the assaulted girl, stood high up on the
pole and kicked repeatedly at the face and head of the dying wretch.
When
the hanging was over the crowd stood and, with the aid of a searchlight focused
on the two men dangling in the air, viewed the results of its defiance of all
law and order with calm satisfaction. The mob slowly dispersed and it was about
1 o’clock when the police were able to get close enough to the bodies to
cut them down and turn them over to a local undertake. Two were still hanging
to the pole and one was lying on the ground, battered and bruised, where the mob
had stamped and kicked the body fiendishly.
Headquarters a Wreck.
The headquarters station is a wreck from basement to the third floor. The mob apparently was insane with desire to destroy and wreak vengeance. Windows, furniture, office records, and even the battery room on the third floor were destroyed. Everything was soaked with water from the hose handled by both sides and the floor of every room was ankle deep
(Continued on page 14, first column.)
(Continued from page 1.)
in water. Hardly a whole window is left in the building.
The first
demonstration which caused some apprehension came early in the evening, when
Sergeant Olson called Commissioner Murnian to the station. Rumors of impending
trouble had reached the police and every preparation was made to be ready for
trouble. Reserves and every available policeman from all districts were called
into headquarters. Commissioner Murnian took charge and as the crowd grew and
became more threatening barricaded all doors. Bim timbers and steel rails were
obtained and while these were being used to batter down the doors others
furnished the crowd stones and bricks from Michigan street with which to bombard
the windows and every policeman they could see.
Chief Murphy, on his way
from Virginia with eight other prisoners connected with the assault, was met on
the Vermilion road and informed of the trouble in time to avoid bringing his
prisoners to the notice of the mob. A hasty run was made to a farm house on the
Vermilion road, where the prisoners were left under guard. On the arrival of
Chief Murphy the police were equipped with guns and bayonets and ordered to
clear the streets, which they did with little difficulty as the crowd’s
bloodlust had been satisfied.
One May be Innocent.
That there is a possibility that the mob has killed an innocent man was
brought to light by Chief Murphy, who declared that one of the six prisoners was
being held simply as a witness against the others and was in no way connected
with the crime. Whether one of the men lynched was this man Chief Murphy had
had no time to
investigate before spiriting them away last night. He
declared this morning that one of the men killed was one who had confessed and
implicated the others and had given most of the information of the assault to
the police.
With the death of this man the police are without means of
fastening the guilt on the remaining three, outside of the statements made to
the police by the prisoners during their first examination by the chief
yesterday morning.
Mob Well Prepared.
That the men taking part in the lynching came well prepared is borne out by
the number of tools and other instruments brought with them for the purpose of
forcing the jail doors. Stuck fast in the steel bar of the door leading into
the boys department cells was a first-class machinists’ steel saw.
Several blades were broken in sawing the steel bars two of which were cut
through.
This mob brought a heavy battering ram, which had no effect on that
door. The gang then put into play picks, sledge hammer and other instruments
and smashed their way through the wall breaking through sixteen inches of brick
and mortar. A hole three feet wide and two feet high was made.
Through the
hole men with leveled guns went at the Negroes and chased them through the hole
into the arms of the waiting mob. After the Negroes were outside of the cell
room a short mock trial was held. The impromptu jury found them
“guilty” and the mob cheered and dragged them to the scene of the
hanging.