The Lynchings in Duluth

On the evening of June 15, 1920, in Duluth, Minnesota, three young black men, accused of the rape of a white woman, were pulled from their jail cells and lynched by a mob numbering in the thousands. Michael Fedo, a former journalist, tells the story in a clear, sober manner, weaving a skilful narrative. Using newspaper accounts, court records, state files, and interviews with ageing and often reluctant witnesses, he recounts the small but telling stories of individual participants and observers -- both blacks and whites -- in a manner that casts them as ordinary people caught up in an extraordinary moments of violence and hatred. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the lynching of black men was typically a rural, southern phenomenon. This account of the Duluth lynchings shows that the mentality necessary for such events was not particular to any region.