Clayton Jackson McGhie Memorial Committee records

On June 15, 1920, three young African-American men - Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, and Isaac McGhie - who had been wrongly accused of raping a white woman were abducted from the Duluth City Jail. A mob of five to ten thousand people savagely beat and tortured these three young men, then hanged them from a lamppost.

The Clayton Jackson McGhie Memorial Committee was formed following a vigil marking the 80th anniversary of this event. The vigil and the idea for a memorial resulted from conversations between Heidi Bakk-Hansen and community activist Henry Banks while Bakk-Hansen was researching her article "Duluth's Lingering Shame." The article was published on June 7, 2000 in the Ripsaw News. The Memorial Committee organized to acknowledge this painful piece of Duluth's history, to create a memorial at the site of the lynching, and to support Duluth in becoming a more just and inclusive community. After three years of work by the committee, a Memorial Plaza including inscriptions and sculptural representations of the young men was dedicated on October 10, 2003 on Second Avenue East and First Street, kitty corner from the lynching site. The Committee's ongoing work includes community education, a scholarship program, curriculum development, and a website.