Talk:Duluth lynchings

Improvements

TYPO his father nine years old? "His father, Abram Zimmerman, was nine years old in June 1920 and lived two blocks from the site of the lynchings. Zimmerman passed the story on to his son.[8]"

```` — Preceding unsigned comment added by 180.191.145.236 (talk) 06:31, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

The article on "Desolation Row" says the father was eight years old. Risssa (talk) 02:06, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

The title should be changed to "1920 Duluth Lynchings" to make it clear that this article is only about the 1920 lynchings and not the 1918 Duluth lynching. Unklscrufy (talk) 08:55, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

This has been changed. Risssa (talk) 02:09, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

The "aftermath" section

The last paragraph of the "Aftermath" section is supposedly a direct quote, but it's horribly written so I kind of doubt it. Also, I cannot find the quote on the source cited... delete it?

--Natalie 20:26, 15 July 2006 (UTC) Natalie Erin

Shouldn't this article link to the Duluth article?

Osirisrising (talk) 22:27, 24 February 2008 (UT Elias Clayton was lynched and beaten to death

Dylan

Do we have an online source anywhere asserting that Dylan was inspired by this? I can't find verification that Dad passed on the tale to Bob, for example.(No, we don't need online sources -- paper sources are fine -- but I'd like to read the article.) --jpgordon<sup>::==( o )</sup> 17:27, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Hoekstra, Dave, "Dylan's Duluth Faces Up to Its Past," Chicago Sun-Times, July 1, 2001.

is the assumed source, has anyone read it? 81.174.156.198 (talk) 18:58, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Memorial

The picture of the Duluth memorial looks like it is a pile of snow.
That's actually the memorial in the background, but who can tell?
Ornithikos (talk) 01:25, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Leveraging

"US Steel for instance, the most important regional employer, addressed labor concerns by leveraging African-American laborers, migrants from the South."

Does this mean US Steel kept wages low by threatening to hire black workers if white workers went out on strike? That's what I think it means but I'm not sure how many other people will understand that. I think this should be rewritten. Risssa (talk) 02:17, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

Agree and rewrote it. The MN Historical Society website simply said that US Steel had recruited blacks in Duluth as workers - the population of blacks was under 500, very small, especially contrasted with the 30,000 foreign-born immigrants, who made up one-third of the city.Parkwells (talk) 19:40, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

Memorial Section

I deleted the last sentence regarding the VDARE feedback on the memorial. It seems out of place and doesn't directly address the event that is the subject of the article. Also, not contemporary to the event. Klaun (talk) 00:12, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

There was a request for a citation to the Clayton Jackson McGhie Memorial Scholarship. I added that citation. 168.245.155.23 (talk) 15:24, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

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White nationalist terrorism

"Lynchings were used to enforce white supremacy and intimidate blacks by racial terrorism" is from our article Lynching in the United States. I don't understand from the edit summary why the Category:White nationalist terrorism was removed from this article. Pinging Gulbenk. Thank you. Leviv ich 19:44, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

Hello Levivich, thanks for your inquiry. The 1920 lynchings in Duluth were crimes perpetrated against a specific group of blacks by a group of whites who were likely motivated by racial animus. It was a one off. The previous lynching in that area involved a white immigrant who was viewed as a draft dodger. No pattern of organized white supremacist activity, just an angry mob, and no political or religious motivation which is the hallmark of terrorism. The category listing was an overreach. Gulbenk (talk) 20:31, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

Gulbenk, thanks for your reply. I think you'll agree that it doesn't really matter if I think it's terrorism or if you think it's terrorism, it matters what the RSes say, and I submit that the RSes call it terrorism, and our article should, too. I would like to add this sentence to the end of the "Aftermath" section: Today, the lynchings are considered an act of racial terrorism., with a bundle cite to the NYTimes, the journal, the U of Chicago Press book, and the local Duluth paper (the ABL-CLIO isn't necessary):

• New York Times: "A Lynching Memorial Unveiled in Duluth". The New York Times. 2003-12-05. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2019-03-19.: "United States until recently, none are more ghastly than the campaign of racial terror that gripped this country from the 1880's to the 1930's, when thousands of black Americans were hanged, mutilated, burned alive or dragged to death while huge crowds looked on. Sometimes called 'lynching bees' or 'Negro barbecues,' these events were cast as macabre carnivals, which drew crowds with children and picnic baskets from miles around. The victims' bodies were sometimes photographed for postcards, which were used as instruments of terror until mailing such postcards was barred in the early 20th century."
• The journal Indiana Magazine of History: Doss, Erika (2014). "Public Art, Public Response: Negotiating Civic Shame in Duluth, Minnesota". Indiana Magazine of History. 110 (1): 40–46. doi:10.5378/indimagahist.110.1.0040. ISSN 0019-6673. JSTOR 10.5378/indimagahist.110.1.0040. Retrieved 2019-03-19., p. 42: "After the Civil War and throughout the twentieth century, whites employed racial terrorism to extend the dehumanizing inequities of slavery, and to sustain assumptions of white superiority. Acts of lynching were deliberate restraints on the autonomy and citizenship of the black body (or any other “body” that threatened white power). Lynching was a cancerous eruption all over the country: in California, Wyoming, Texas, Indiana, Georgia, Minnesota. The federal government repeatedly failed to enact anti-lynching legislation, and local courts were similarly unresponsive; in Duluth, for example, only three men from the 10,000-member lynch mob were tried and convicted for rioting, each serving less than fifteen months in prison. No one was ever convicted for the murders of Clayton, Jackson, and McGhie."
• A book published by University of Chicago Press has an entire chapter called "Racial Terrorism in Duluth": Doss, Erika (2012-09-07). Memorial Mania: Public Feeling in America. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-15939-3., page 268.
• A book published by ABC-CLIO: Gallagher, Charles A.; Lippard, Cameron D. (2014-06-24). Race and Racism in the United States: An Encyclopedia of the American Mosaic [4 volumes]. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-1-4408-0346-8., p. 294: "These projects [memorials such as the one to the Duluth victims] reckoning with past violence have ... attempted to educate whites about past racial terrorism ..."
• Local newspaper Duluth News Tribune: Martelle, Scott (2018-12-15). "National View: Atone for horrific past, finally make lynching a federal crime | Duluth News Tribune". Duluth News Tribune. Retrieved 2019-03-19.: "After slavery, these acts of terrorism — more than 4,700 documented cases from 1882 to 1968 — became the ultimate expression of racism and white supremacy."

I'd also like to add the category back. Any objection? Leviv ich 02:45, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

First, I would like to commend you for a great research effort. It is quite obvious that you take this quite seriously, and that is precisely why I enjoy working with users on this site. So you want to add "White Nationalist Terrorism" as a category for this article. So let's look at that as two parts, white nationalism, and terrorism.

None of the references you cite include the term "white nationalism" which is distinct and different from "white supremacy". This was a lynch mob, as the Indiana Magazine of History notes. While a number of the articles you cited mention "white supremacy", you should note that the references are to the wave of lynching that took place 1880-1930, and not to the *specific* event in Duluth. But if they did, it is still not white nationalism. The NYT quote does not mention Duluth at all. The Indiana magazine mentions Duluth only in the context of unresponsive courts, and does not characterize the mob other than by size (10,000). And so forth. Are we agreed that "white nationalism" is not appropriate? Before I leave that part of the two-part analysis, I think that it is worth noting that Duluth at that time was comprised of a number of racial and ethnic communities. I haven't read anything to indicate that there were any significant events or examples of racial tension in that city prior to the 1920 incident. So, it looks like there was no festering upwelling of even a white supremacy movement, much less a white nationalism organization afoot. There is some evidence to indicate that they didn't take too kindly to outsiders, however. And a out of town carny or hapless Lithuanian would fit that description. If you actually don't believe that every white who kills a black person is motivated by white supremacy (and I sincerely hope that you don't), then I'm guessing that it's the way the men were murdered that elicits this need to label. But that is problematic as well, because the history of the United States is filled with examples of mobs busting suspects out of jail and hanging/shooting/or otherwise killing them... without race being a part of the equation. Mob rule is ugly, and base emotions (such as racism) turn store clerks into savage murderers. But that is far different than the obsessive brooding self-identification of a white supremacist, or the ideological doctrine of a white nationalist.

Terrorism. There is a difference between terror, being terrified, and terrorism. By way of example: if you went to the beach and saw a person eaten by a shark, you would be terrified. The shock and gore may leave you with a permanent terror of the ocean and of sharks. But the shark is not a terrorist. A shark can never be a terrorist because his motivation is simply to eat, and not to advance a religious or political agenda through an intentionally savage act. I think the Indiana Magazine of History almost got it right (at least for the period after the Civil War and through Reconstruction) when they describe the acts of terror against blacks as an attempt to achieve a political goal (voter suppression, wage inequality, etc.). Terrorism is a tool. But, lacking that specific agenda, acts of terror are not terrorism. A number of the examples you cited flat out got that wrong. They don't differentiate something terrifying from terrorism. To them, the shark is a terrorist. If you re-read the NYT quote you'll see that they make (at least in the portion you quoted) a distinction between acts and instruments of terror and terrorism. It seems likely that the citizens of Duluth would have lynched another Lithuanian (this time for a rape, rather than mundane draft dodging) as surely as they lynched a poor black manual laborer from Decatur, Georgia. I don't think it goes much deeper than that. Gulbenk (talk) 05:24, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. The New York Times quote includes, "The victims' bodies were sometimes photographed for postcards, which were used as instruments of terror until mailing such postcards was barred in the early 20th century." The victims' bodies in this case was the victims of the Duluth lynching. A picture of the postcard is in our article. So the NYT quote does mention Duluth, as the entire NYT article is about the Duluth memorial (a picture of that is also in our article). We can come back to "white nationalism" but are we agreed on this being "terrorism"? Leviv ich 05:42, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

I don't see how the NYT sentence "The victims' bodies were sometimes photographed..." can refer to anything but the broad history of such events, not this specific event. That "sometimes" just wouldn't make sense when writing about a specific event. And we are dealing with a specific event, not the history of lynching. While there were photographs taken in Duluth, were they turned into postcards and mailed to anyone as part of an intimidation campaign? It doesn't say, and you can't presume, just because someone somewhere else once did that. The NYT just says that such postcards were sometimes used as instruments of terror (somewhere). Was the mailing of postcards barred because of this specific event? It doesn't say that, either. And it seems unlikely, since events in Duluth which resulted in a change of postal regulations would merit a more prominent mention. You just don't have the elements in this specific event to label it terrorism. Gulbenk (talk) 14:50, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

It is worth noting that the NYT article differentiates between lynchings which were acts of random violence and agenda-driven lynchings (which would fit the definition of terrorism). The NYT does not mention any agenda at all in Duluth, referring to it simply as "violence". The article does not support, in any fashion, your assertion that the event in Duluth was terrorism. Gulbenk (talk) 15:02, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

Background Section

There is a "citation needed" for paragraph about the Red Summmer of 1919. However, there is a link to that entry in the paragraph and that entry is well-cited. I don't believe this needs to to be cited in this entry and suggest it be removed. 168.245.155.23 (talk) 15:27, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

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