Medcalf: Will powerful white Minnesotans live up to promises made after George Floyd’s murder? Myron Medcalf, Star Tribune
Nearly 100 years before George Floyd was murdered, three African American circus workers were lynched by a white mob after they were falsely accused of raping a white woman, Irene Tusken, in Duluth. An infamous postcard from the scene of the lynchings shows proud white men posing with the bodies of Elmer Jackson, Elias Clayton and Isaac McGhie.
The photo, however, does not show every character. A white priest, William Powers, climbed the light pole that night and attempted to stop the lynchings, per Michael Fedo s book The Lynchings in Duluth. That remains the choice for white Minnesotans today: complicity or empathy.
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