Clayton-Jackson-McGhie Memorial

The Clayton-Jackson-McGhie Memorial at the corner of First Street and Second Avenue East in downtown Duluth commemorates Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, and Isaac McGhie -- three Black circus workers who were lynched by a mob on June 15, 1920, in a vacant lot near this intersection. They had been falsely accused of assaulting a white woman; the accusation was later found to be fabricated. Approximately 10,000 people watched or participated in the lynching. The event was one of the most horrific acts of racial violence in Minnesota history and was suppressed in public memory for decades.

The memorial's connection to music runs through Bob Dylan, who grew up in Duluth and Hibbing and would certainly have been aware of this history through the city's collective memory. Dylan's early protest songs drew on the same American tradition of racial injustice that the Duluth lynching represents; his song 'The Death of Emmett Till' addressed the same pattern of white mob violence against Black Americans. The memorial in Dylan's birth city is a reminder of the American history that shaped the music he made.

The memorial, designed by Carla Stetson and dedicated in 2003, features bronze sculptures of the three men surrounded by text documenting the events of that night and the community's reckoning with them. It is located on the corner of the street where the lynching took place, making the public space itself a site of acknowledgement and confrontation with history. The memorial is freely accessible at all times.