Superior Puts End to Ghoulish Trade.
Type of event: Lynchings
Location: Duluth; St. Louis County; Minnesota; United States
Citation:
The Duluth Rip-Saw, June 26,1920, page 4.
“Superior Puts End to Ghoulish Trade”
Image text
PUTS END TO GHOULISH TRADE
Mercenary Photographer Fined
for Displaying Prints
of
Lynched Negroes.
It cost Ralph Greenfield, a Superior photographer, a fine of $25 and
costs for displaying in his window pictures of the negroes lynched in Duluth
last week. Judge French, who hoard the case, imposed the
penalty.
Greenfield refused to remove the gruesome objects when requested
by Capt. Osborn, therefore he was arrested on a charge of offering for sale
“indiscrete and obscene pictures of the naked bodies of three negroes
lynched in Duluth," contrary to law in Superior.
Greenfield fought the
case, being represented in court by R. M. Rieser. T. L. McIntosh, corporation
attorney, prosecuted. A very large crowd attended the trial, many of those
present being young people.
The jury of six embraced H. L. Loyd, K. S.
Buckman, J. C. Crowley A. Grant, W. R. Smith and J. W. Gallant. A verdict of
guilty was returned turned in about fifteen minutes. Photographer Greenfield
declared that he will appeal the case to the superior court.
Certain ones
connected with the Duluth News Tribune took photographs of the lynched
negroes and were responsible for them being peddled up and down the streets of
Duluth and then over in Superior. It was considered a ghoulish act, sordidly
done, solely for money, and aggregating thousands of dollars in receipts. A
large photograph sold for $1.00, while postal card sizes went as low as 30
cents. There was much indignation in Duluth over the public vending of the
debasing photographs. Little boys offered them for sale up and down the streets.
But anything to get the coin seems to go in Duluth.
Over in Superior,
Mayor Baxter resented Greenfield [illegible] of the photographs of [illegible]
bodies, hanging by ropes to an electric light pole. He took quick steps to stop
the display and traffic and, when the ghoulish seekers after easy money did not
accord with the Baxterian ideas of decency and propriety, he promptly directed
the municipal agents of justice to take action.
Moral uplift is steadily
advancing in Superior, while it is slumping so heavily and rapidly in Duluth
that many disciples of high moral endeavor fear it will be wiped entirely oft
the board.