Читать книгу The Lynchings in Duluth - MIchael Fedo - Страница 13

DULUTH WAS THEN, AND REMAINS TODAY, a thin ribbon of city, stretching along the shores of Lake Superior for twenty-five miles at a northeast slant. Its boundaries creep back from the lake at distances varying from a half mile to barely four miles. Variously described as rugged or picturesque, Duluth is set on a hill overlooking Lake Superior. Across the St. Louis River bay lies Superior, Wisconsin. Together, the two cities have been called the Twin Ports. Both waterfronts support active trade, although Duluth predominates.

The city is situated about one hundred and fifty-five miles northeast of Minneapolis and St. Paul, and about one hundred and fifty miles southwest of the Canadian border. The dominant subculture in Duluth, as in all of Minnesota at the time, was Scandinavian.

Superior Street, the main artery, follows the line of the lake and holds most of the major downtown businesses—hotels, clothiers, banks, and restaurants. Downtown Superior Street covers about nine blocks from Fifth Avenue West to Third Avenue East and is situated about three blocks from the lake.

Duluth begins in the weedy, barren shambles that is Gary, a neighborhood initially populated by many of the city’s blacks, most of whom had come from southern states in search of employment. A few blacks were native to the area of northern Minnesota, their ancestors having been with early logging and trapping concerns. And by 1920, perhaps three hundred of the city’s five hundred black residents lived in Gary.

Slightly east was Morgan Park, which would evolve from northern European immigrants to become a Serbian and Slavic settlement built around the large plant erected by U.S. Steel. For many years, Morgan Park was a virtual company town—small frame houses on neat, orderly streets. Though some blacks worked at the plant, they were not allowed to live in Morgan Park, within easy commuting distance of the plant.

To the east, another mile or so, was West Duluth, populated by blue-collar families, Italians, and Finns; workers from the factories settled into neat, serviceable houses painted white or brown, pale green, or gray. Their children attended Denfeld High School, and citizens took great pride in Denfeld’s athletic dominance over teams from wealthier Central High.

In the central or east hillside area, beginning about Fourth Avenue West, was an intermingling of workers living in ordinary two-story homes as well as stately mansions built by lumber barons during the 1880s and 1890s. Duluth’s east end arbitrarily started about Fifteenth Avenue East, moving into fashionable Woodland, Lester Park, and Lakeside, where the professionals—lawyers, doctors, stockbrokers—dwelt in company with bankers and lumber and mining industrialists.

Both Irene Tusken and Jimmy Sullivan lived in West Duluth neighborhoods. Irene’s father, Arnold, was a mail carrier and probably walked the city from one end to the other on various routes during his years with the postal service. Perhaps he was comfortable in the cozy blocks around Forty-eighth Avenue West and Sixth Street, where folks in similar economic straits tended to pull together, tended to give a feeling of small-town living. But if there was small-town security, there was also small-town gossip. And with his postman’s ear for housewifely gossip, he no doubt had heard rumors about Jimmy Sullivan.

Jimmy was spoiled, many used to say. The kid had too much money for his own good. He took in $140 a month down at the docks in a day when many family men felt fortunate to earn perhaps one hundred dollars. There was some resentment, too, on the part of neighborhood men that Jimmy got the good job because his father was superintendent at the grain terminal.

But the rumors that would have most distressed Mr. Tusken were the continual references to the boy’s drinking. Jimmy supposedly bought hooch every chance he got. Further, Mr. Sullivan didn’t directly disapprove, saying that his kid was a little wild, maybe, but would eventually settle down. And at Denfeld, where teachers were considered stern disciplinarians, Jimmy was never in real trouble. Folks wondered why. He smoked cigarettes in open defiance of the school ban and bragged about his easy relationship with many girls. None of this kept him from playing forward on the basketball team, and some parents were upset because the boy rarely bothered to obey training regulations.

What had to disturb Mr. Tusken about all this was that his daughter was infatuated with the young man. He may have felt rather powerless because Irene was, after all, on her own, earning her own keep. He doubtless felt that as a father he had a responsibility to keep his daughter from trouble, and Jimmy Sullivan looked like trouble. As the relationship between Jimmy and Irene developed, it probably crossed Arnold’s mind that Jimmy might be taking advantage of Irene.

Irene didn’t finish school as Jimmy had. Perhaps her father thought her naive, unable to see behind Jimmy’s scheming. Mercifully, the gossips didn’t talk about the girl when Mr. Tusken was within earshot. But they did talk about her. It may have been guilt by association, but if Jimmy was wild, and Irene was often with him, what conclusions could the gossips draw?

At the Sullivan home, Jimmy was often a center-stage attraction. His father liked to talk about the boy’s grit and determination. He was also a handsome boy, muscular and stocky, with a ready and confident smile. When his hair was combed straight back off his forehead, many people thought he resembled the man who modeled Arrow shirts in newspapers and magazines. His father liked to think that Jimmy was a “chip off the old block.”

But others who knew him from the neighborhood and at school, where Jimmy had graduated in June 1920, thought him arrogant, especially regarding women. None of this kept many young girls from finding him appealing, despite, or perhaps because of, his apparent penchant for vandalism and other questionable pranks.

Young people, offspring of immigrant or second-generation stock, often resented traditional restrictions and were looking ahead to the bright, happy times. They were anxious to get the twenties roaring. Jimmy was a bit ahead of his time. He could make them roar already.

About 8 PM on the night of June 14, Irene Tusken boarded a Grand Avenue streetcar traveling east and got off at the Vernon Street stop. She walked several blocks west toward the circus grounds. As she approached the well-lighted circus area, she saw the entrance arch ringed with electric and gas lights a few feet from Grand Avenue. On the other side of the arch was a passageway sprinkled with sawdust and lined with sideshow tents and concession stands.

The calliope sounds swelled over the grounds, mingling with the delighted shrieks of youngsters and teenagers on numerous rides. Although it was not quite dark, the fully lighted passageway lent a twinkling to the carefree carnival atmosphere.

Irene had not gone with Jimmy to the circus, possibly to avoid a confrontation with her father. But once there, she met him just inside the archway, with a small crowd of laughing teenagers. She joined them, and the group wandered throughout the exhibits and the sideshows until shortly after 9 PM. By then, the couple had separated from their friends and headed toward the tracks behind the menagerie and cook tents, where about two hundred people were watching the crews pack up.

Perhaps the two were holding hands, touching gently, hip to hip. Or perhaps their relationship was businesslike and formal; with no traces of nervousness, they may have discussed approaching the blacks.

If the two watched the animals being led into cars, then crossed to the field where the circus sounds faded and located a soft spot of ground, they may have engaged in adolescent fumblings, the damp night air playing over their bodies and then … or perhaps a contact was made, a price agreed upon. Payment would be forthcoming—after the merchandise was sampled.

If the couple believed they were alone, possibly the observing blacks from the circus laughed, chirping obscenities. Or it might have been that the blacks refused to pay for their pleasure. But a more plausible explanation of the happening was that while beyond the menagerie tents, the two may have been robbed by the blacks or merely insulted. Embarrassed and angered, the couple moved away, the slow drawls and taunts echoing behind them.

Irene, perhaps confused more than outraged, took her cue from Jimmy. And, walking next to him, she must have felt the tenseness in his body, seen his face glower with fierce fury. Perhaps as he gathered his thoughts he supposed they could yell rape. That would surely fix the “niggers.” They’d hang for that! It’s no wonder the guys at the steel plant hated “niggers.”

The two walked to the Grand Avenue car line, boarded a streetcar, and rode to Forty-ninth Avenue West and Grand. From there, they hiked three blocks to the Tusken home, where they discussed a possible plan of action. After ten minutes, Jimmy left, possibly telling Irene to wait until she heard from him.

Irene went into the house, where she saw her father seated in the front room, reading the evening paper. He saw her but said nothing. “I’m going up to bed,” the girl said.

Her father acknowledged her with a perfunctory grunt and returned to his paper.

Hearing sounds of bedtime preparation in her parents’ room, Irene stopped and looked in and saw her mother putting up her hair. Mrs. Tusken noticed her daughter, and the girl stepped inside the room. “Mama, I met Jimmy tonight,” Irene said. “We went to the circus.”

The weary Mrs. Tusken perhaps yawned and smiled weakly. “All right, dear, go to bed now.”

Irene bathed and was in bed by ten minutes after eleven.

Jimmy, meanwhile, went home to change clothes before reporting to work at the Duluth Missabe and Northern Ore Docks at midnight. He had been working the midnight to 8 AM shift as a boat spotter, watching the holds in the cargo carriers fill up, then signaling the loader to stop. The hours on the job were sometimes an impediment to his active social life, and occasionally dust blew in his eyes or clogged his nostrils. But these were small sacrifices. The pay was good, and with the money he could afford the small luxuries other young men his age would do without.

He was popular with some of the seamen—a rough, brawling bunch who sometimes invited him to participate in poker games when work was slow or gave him good Canadian whisky and maybe even asked him to find girls for them occasionally. No doubt the boy was flattered by the attention of the older men and pleased to be accepted by them.

When he arrived this night, there were few seamen around, and Jimmy paid little attention to their good-natured bantering. He completed the loading of one boat, and shortly after 1 AM told his father, P. B. Sullivan, who was night superintendent at the terminal, that Irene Tusken had been raped by circus Negroes. Enraged, P. B. Sullivan phoned Arnold Tusken, then called Chief John Murphy at home.

It was nearly 2 AM when the chief was awakened by the call. A strident voice told him to get out to the ore docks immediately. But the chief, believing he was talking to a crank, demanded to know why he should leave his bed.

Sullivan gave Murphy his name and position but refused to say why he was calling. He pointedly added that the nature of the call was a serious emergency.

“How many men will I need?” the chief asked.

“Figure that out when you get here,” Sullivan replied.

The chief dressed quickly, then went down to the station and checked out a car for the drive to the West Duluth docks. There, amid shouting and haranguing, father and son reported the details of an alleged assault on Irene Tusken.

At about ten minutes to ten last night, Jimmy reported, he and Irene were starting for home; when they turned to leave, here were six blacks blocking their way; one slipped behind Jimmy and grabbed his arms, while a second black placed a pistol in back of his ear. “Be quiet,” he allegedly growled, “or I’ll blow your brains out.”

At that point, Jimmy said, he stopped struggling. The weapon, he said, scared him. Then a second roustabout went through his pockets, removed his watch, examined it, but returned it. A third black grabbed Irene, placing his hand over her mouth, while a fourth man removed her ring. Several men looked at the ring but gave it back.

Then Jimmy told Murphy he was pushed forward while four men dragged Irene to a clump of bushes near the railroad tracks. “Just keep still,” the man with the gun reportedly told Jimmy. As Irene was settled behind some bushes, she fainted, the chief was told, and Jimmy was made to watch as the blacks “ravished” her. When she recovered, fifteen minutes later, Jimmy helped her up, and the man with the pistol pointed a direction away from the circus and told them to beat it. The couple did as they were told, and young Sullivan told Murphy that he went home, came to work, and informed his father of the incident.

The story clearly distressed Murphy. Rape was not a usual crime in Duluth, but he knew it always meant trouble. Inevitably, the family of the victim would attempt revenge, but the man inside the officer couldn’t fault that. Making matters worse, he probably felt that six blacks violated a young white girl.

Using Sullivan’s phone, Murphy called the yardmaster at the Northern Pacific station and ordered the circus train detained. However, he was told the train had left and was heading through the Duluth, Winnipeg and Pacific yards, en route to Virginia, about sixty miles north. Murphy made a second call to the DW&P yards, reaching the yardmaster after a dozen impatient rings. “This is Chief of Police Murphy,” he barked. “We have an emergency here, and I want the circus train held until I can get there.”

His third call went to the dispatcher at the police station. “Get hold of Fiskett, Schulte, Lading, and Olson,” he ordered. “Find ten or twelve others and have them meet me at the Duluth, Winnipeg and Pacific lines in West Duluth right away.”

Capt. Anthony Fiskett, a veteran officer, the second-highest ranking man on the Duluth force, received a call shortly after 3 AM and led the contingent of officers to the rail yards by 4:30 AM.

The chief had already begun jogging down the tracks, shouting to his men to divide up and cover both sides of the tracks. The beefy officers huffed down the line, trying to stay abreast of their chief and wondering why the urgency of his call. Finally, Murphy gasped that a white girl had been raped by circus “niggers,” and they’d have to get the guilty men. “There were six of ’em,” Murphy called.

Nearly out of breath, Murphy pushed forward, prodding his half-wakened men onward, moving them out where the sparse lights of the train glowed of pale blue and yellow in the predawn dark, over a quarter mile up the tracks. The great train snaked another half mile around a bend and nearly out of sight. But at last she was stopped, and the approaching officers could hear her engine hissing as they hurried toward the lead car.

Chief Murphy, Capt. Fiskett, and Lt. Schulte, a hard-bitten veteran of twenty-two years’ service, located the foreman’s car and explained the situation. Six blacks had raped a white girl near the menagerie tent last night, the chief excitedly explained. “I want to talk to every nigger that was idle between about nine and ten o’clock last night,” he said.

Officers and foremen clad in slacks and robes started down along the train on both sides, rounding up all blacks on the cars, dragging them back toward the end where the rest were asleep in the segregated sleeping cars.

Police stormed into the sleeping cars and began jerking drowsy workers from their racks. “Get out of here, you black sons of bitches!” they snarled, poking nightsticks into the cots of the sleeping men or rudely rolling them to the floor.

Max Mason, a twenty-one-year-old hand from Decatur, Alabama, and at five feet four inches one of the shortest of the blacks employed by the circus, was lifted from his rack and dropped on the floor. “Goddamn you! Get out of here!” roared the cop.

Mason, who had been sleeping heavily, reached for his shoes as a blast of chilled air swept through the open car door. He grunted and mumbled incoherently. An officer grabbed his leg and twisted him back to the floor. “Get over there, you black son of a bitch! And don’t you talk back!” Shoeless and without his shirt, Mason was pushed outside and thrown in a line with nearly one hundred and twenty other black workers. And in the cold gray of morning, his teeth chattered; he apprehensively looked around at his shivering, bewildered mates, some of whom gingerly fingered bruises or leaned over retching, the results of nightsticks rammed into unsuspecting bellies.

Officers angered both by the alleged crime and at having been ordered from their beds then swung their lanterns close to the blacks. Mason would later remember how he envied them in their blue jackets and thought perhaps he made a mistake by leaving Alabama, where a body wouldn’t freeze half to death in the middle of June.

A uniformed officer paced up and down in front of the line. “There was six of you niggers raped a white girl on the circus grounds last night. We’ll have every one of you in jail in ten minutes if we don’t find those six. So you boys that know something better start talking.”

A foreman and several other officers interrupted him, and they conferred, talking in muted voices. Finally, most of the blacks were released and returned to the warmth of their cars, while about forty others were kept in the line. “Only those boys might of been around the menagerie tent at the time,” a rangy foreman said. “Just them that worked in the big top or waited tables.” The foreman returned to his coach, while the workers were left to shiver in the dawn on a West Duluth hill overlooking the slumbering city.

P. B. and James Sullivan were brought out then, and the boy was asked to identify the assailants. Looking up and down the line, walking slowly, pausing to examine black faces, Jimmy turned toward Murphy and said, “They look pretty much alike to me. I don’t know for sure.”

The officer exhorted him to try again, telling Jimmy that the charge and the crime are very serious matters and “it would be terrible to arrest the wrong people.” But the young man still could not, or would not, make positive identifications.

Moments later, Irene and her father were ushered to the scene in a police vehicle, and after it was determined that the girl was not in shock, she was asked if she might identify her attackers. She appeared hesitant but calm as she examined the lineup, but said the faces weren’t too clear to her. Nevertheless, she identified five whose general size and physique seemed to resemble those who supposedly attacked her.

Meanwhile, Murphy and Schulte, with a blistering crossfire of questions, continued grilling other blacks. Some of the blacks, puzzled or intimidated, gave incoherent or vague accounts of their whereabouts in an attempt to veil the crap game. A few blacks apparently suspected the game was the reason for their detention, and fearing loss of jobs and wages, wished to avoid any confrontation with the law. But from this interrogation, Murphy held eight more men for arrest.

After placing all thirteen under arrest, Murphy released the circus train, which continued on to Virginia. The blacks were loaded into police cars and driven to the jail at the downtown headquarters.

During the next two hours, Duluth officers and the arrested suspects were engaged in an exhaustive questioning intended to coerce blacks into incriminating testimony. There was no such testimony, and seven of the thirteen were released.

Of the six who remained in custody, Chief Murphy believed that five—Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, Nate Green, Loney Williams, and John Thomas—might have been involved in the alleged rape. The sixth man, Isaac McGhie, was being held as a material witness. These six, between the ages of nineteen and twenty-two, had joined the circus in Peru last April before the troupe’s northern swing.

McGhie was placed in a cell in the boys’ division on the station’s second floor because there was not enough available cell space in the main floor men’s department. The others were locked up just after 7 AM, the morning of June 15.

Chief Murphy, Fiskett, and Schulte remained at headquarters after dismissing other officers called out for the emergency. All three, drained by the session, had misgivings about the case and weren’t sure that all men who might have been implicated were in jail. They sat in the outer office, a room which might have been described in a detective novel as having that remote, heartless, not quite dirty, not quite clean, not quite human look and smell such rooms always seem to have. There was that sameness of nondescript hues of gray-greens and washed-out blues on walls and ceilings, accented by sterile, carpetless floors.

Finally, Murphy said that the girl and young Sullivan were too shaken to make positive identifications, and some of the stories he’d heard from the blacks didn’t quite make sense. Just in case, he ventured, they had better round up some of those they’d questioned again. It was agreed that the three would drive the sixty miles to Virginia later in the morning to make more arrests.

After Schulte and Fiskett had gone, the chief remained in the office another fifteen minutes, contemplating the crime. It was the most deplorable he’d encountered in his long service as a police officer. The thought of the assault revolted him, and his sympathy unquestionably rested with the Tusken family. What Murphy found particularly galling was the fact that should the blacks be convicted, as they no doubt would be, they’d receive no more than thirty years in the state penitentiary at Stillwater; the poor girl would have to endure the horror for the rest of her life. Sometimes, it seemed to the troubled chief, justice was not served, even when justice was done.

Like many officers of his time, Murphy felt capital punishment should not have been abolished. Even death itself wasn’t stern enough for thugs who violated innocent young girls.

At 8:15 AM on June 15, Dr. David Graham, concluding breakfast at home, received a call from Mrs. Tusken. She told him something awful had happened to Irene last night, and could he please come right away. He asked that she take the girl directly to the hospital, but the woman refused and insisted that Dr. Graham make a house call.

He arrived at the Tusken home shortly after 9 AM and found the family in a state of minor hysteria. No one seemed able or willing to state precisely what had happened, but from their nervous chatter, Dr. Graham deduced that the girl had been assaulted, and he prepared for an immediate examination.

The doctor was somewhat surprised that the girl apparently felt no pain or tenderness as he conducted both a speculum and digital exam. He found normal conditions present, though the girl seemed highly agitated. Dr. Graham believed Irene might have been suffering from a slight case of nervous exhaustion. That something had occurred was quite apparent to the doctor, but whatever that something was, Dr. Graham privately concluded that it probably was not rape.