The Lynchings in Duluth. MIchael Fedo
signed a third contract for the book, and it was released in June 2000. This time, the reception was more favorable. The book received attention from the PBS News Hour and National Public Radio’s All Things Considered and was mentioned in the London Times and in Paris’s Le Monde and in an Atlantic blog by James Fallows. High school and college classes throughout the Midwest and beyond were reading and discussing the book, and I was often invited to participate in those discussions. Barry Schreiber, professor of criminal justice at St. Cloud State University, had adopted the book for his introductory class well before the 2000 edition was available (cobbling used copies for students), and in addition to having me talk to his classes, had lobbied for the book’s reissue. Further, Duluth citizens came together to form the Clayton Jackson McGhie Memorial Committee not only to oversee appropriate memorials for the victims, including art and poetry, scholarship funds, and an annual march to honor them, but also to join ethnic and religious groups together in unity against the evils of racism.
For this new edition of The Lynchings in Duluth, some minor alterations have been incorporated into the text. These changes, suggested by historians, were items that I, as a neophyte author back in 1970, missed while preparing the original manuscript. In a few instances, I may have relied too heavily on accounts given by persons interviewed, whose own recollections were fuzzy or took on greater import in their minds during the five decades between the lynchings and the time of those interviews. And, citing the absence of footnoted documentation, some academicians have been reluctant to use the book as a classroom supplement. However, more than forty years ago, my intention was to create an account that would have broad appeal to general readers.
The most notable change in this second edition is the inclusion of the real names of Irene Tusken—the alleged victim of the sexual assault that led to mob action and the hanging of three young men—and James “Jimmy” Sullivan, her escort to the circus on the night of June 14, 1920. In the original text I employed aliases for the two because I was told by two important interview subjects that they wouldn’t speak to me unless I altered the names of Tusken and Sullivan, with whom they were acquainted. Because their participation seemed necessary to complete the book, as a young journalist I acquiesced, much to my later regret, especially since, following the book’s initial publication in 1979, those names were widely published elsewhere. Unfortunately, I did not attempt to convince those interviewees that it might be disingenuous to alter those names.
This second edition still does not include the apparatus of an academic document, such as footnotes or end-notes, primarily because research materials recorded from 1970 to 1973 were lost or discarded following the original publication.
One reviewer suggested that I remove from the text quotes, dialogues, and references that cannot be documented. However, all of these came from sources with tangible connections to the story: relatives and acquaintances of eyewitnesses to the tragedy. Also, I was attempting to write a book that is more accessible to a general reader and wanted to sustain the hour-by-hour narrative incorporating a more immediate, more dramatic approach than the use of the indirect quote. If this be not scholarly, it is, I think, more readerly.
I have also made important corrections to the main body of the text, thanks to the attention and care of reviewers and scholars of this historical period. I subsequently learned that there was no activity by members of the Ku Klux Klan in Duluth preceding the lynchings, and I have corrected that in this edition. I relied on several interviewees who mentioned cross burnings in the city. While these did occur, none were prior to the lynchings. One reviewer pointed out that the connection between workers at the U.S. Steel mill in the Morgan Park neighborhood and racial tensions because black workers were brought in to keep white laborers from striking for higher wages in the aftermath of World War I was only speculative, as no strike occurred. True enough; however, three longtime black residents of Duluth (all since deceased) made pointed comments regarding the importation of a few southern cotton field workers, which, they said, helped convince current employees to not strike. I did not report that a strike occurred at the Morgan Park plant.
If Duluth was once a city with collective amnesia, it is now very much a city with citizens willing to confront its past, admit its sins, and move forward in a spirit of forgiveness and togetherness. And in the process they hope to heal the city’s open, unspoken wounds that had festered for decades.
MICHAEL FEDO
DECEMBER 2015
Addenda from the Original Preface (1979)
Sources upon which this book is based are numerous, and some of those interviewed requested anonymity. Among those were a member of the Max Mason jury, a retired Duluth patrolman on duty during the riot, a man arrested but not indicted for rioting, a witness at the Leonard Hedman trial, the son of a local judge, the daughter-in-law of a grand jury member, a Duluth attorney whose father was contacted by Leonard Hedman’s defense, and dozens of eyewitnesses to the lynchings.
Also interviewed for this book were Richard Griggs, a member of the grand jury; Howard Loraas, a retired police officer who was acquainted with many of the officers on duty during the riot; Dr. Maude Lindquist, professor of history emeritus at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, who knew both James Sullivan and Irene Tusken; Veronica Olson, daughter of Sgt. Oscar Olson; the Rev. Joseph Cashen, who provided biographical information about both the Rev. William Powers and the Rev. P. J. Maloney, who tried to prevent the mob from taking the prisoners; William Maupins Jr., a former president of the Duluth NAACP; Wallace Rodney, Franklin Cox, and Eddie Nichols. There were many others who talked with me, but they merely corroborated evidence or their information was not substantial enough for inclusion within this book.
The Lynchings
in Duluth
1
GLOOM WAS A PERPETUAL STATE OF MIND in Duluth, where the city was frequently shrouded in gray. Spring mornings were ushered in by the mournful groans of a foghorn, announcing yet another day of damp chill, possible rain, or even a dusting of June snow.
But, it wasn’t weather troubling Police Chief John Murphy on this Sunday afternoon, June 13, 1920. He was upset over his deteriorating relationship with the city’s commissioner of public safety, William Murnian. Murphy had picked up rumblings of Murnian’s dissatisfaction with the way Murphy was running the department. And the directive from Murnian ordering Murphy to report to the showgrounds in West Duluth to confer with the parade manager of the John Robinson Circus to determine the route the parade would take on its 9 AM Monday run through downtown was viewed by Murphy as harassment.
This was not an assignment normally forced upon a police chief. There were plenty of sergeants who could easily handle it, but Murnian was insistent. It would be an appropriate public relations gesture, according to the commissioner, but Murphy knew better. It was simply a way of letting him know that Murnian, and perhaps the other commissioners too, wanted him out.
As almost an afterthought, Murnian had called and reminded Murphy that it might be wise if the chief suggested that the circus people kept their “niggers” in line.
The chief knew that there had been trouble over some black employees in the circus. After the Robinson show left its home base in Peru, Indiana, in April, some black workers had been accused of assaulting a white girl. But they had been fired. In a way, Murphy perhaps understood the commissioner’s concern—what Duluth didn’t need was trouble with blacks. Not that there had been problems in the past, but city officials had sensed the growing undercurrent of animosity among many white citizens. Ever since U.S. Steel, the city’s largest employer, began importing black field hands from southern plantations to work at the mill, thereby quelling strike threats by white workers, an uneasy tension existed—especially in the western sectors of the city where the mill was located and where most of the city’s blacks resided.
Still, the chief perceived his latest directive as a forewarning of problems ahead. It had to be thus, for Murnian, while publicly defending the force, had privately come down hard on it after a recent incident that saw Lt. Frank Schulte shoot and kill Eli Vuckidonyich, a suspected liquor smuggler. It didn’t matter that Vuckidonyich had tried to run down Schulte with his car; the lieutenant should have used more discretion, Murnian