Nobel Laureate Sinclair Lewis Wrote About Race Relations While Living In Duluth

When Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016, a lot of the news focused on whether he was the best choice to win that year. No doubt many of those who questioned were earnest but simply unaware of the breadth and depth of his catalogue, and global influence. 

One story that did not get much play, however, was this one. The first American Nobel Laureate, Sinclair Lewis, also lived in Duluth for a season--at the same time as young Bob Dylan. That's right. Bobby Zimmerman was born here in 1941. Six years later the family moved to Hibbing. During that same time period Sinclair Lewis lived in Duluth (1944-1946) and wrote an important novel about race relations which he titled Kingsblood Royal.  

What's of interest to me isn't simply the matter that both the first and latest Nobel Prize-winning authors lived in Duluth at the same time. Rather, it's that each of them had undoubtedly been influenced by an event that occurred here, an event that made each more acutely aware of justice issues and race relations in America. I'm referring to the lynching of 1920.

Nearly every Dylan fan is keenly aware of the opening lines of "Desolation Row": "They're selling post cards of the hanging..." Fewer by far are the number of people who know the story of Kingsblood Royal, which was published in 1947 after Lewis left Duluth.

The storyline was inspired by actual events, not here but in Detroit. An African American doctor, Ossian Sweet, purchased a house in a white section of town. A hostile white mob gathered to protest his having moved into their neighborhood. Rocks were thrown at his house, windows broken. When shots were fired from an upper window two whites were struck, one killed. Dr. Sweet, his wife and nine others were arrested and charged with murder.

Sweet, who was born in Florida, had headed North to escape the Jim Crow South. After having earned his medical degree at Howard University in 1924, Sweet moved to Detroit to set up his practice there. His success enabled him to purchase a middle class home. In the South blacks could be openly treated as second class citizens. In the North, the Sweets learned -- like others before them -- that these unjust rules were not as explicit, but still applied. 

After the arrests, the NAACP acquired Clarence Darrow to represent the Sweets. Detroit prosecutors (yes, this is their argument) said that the Sweets, having moved to a white neighborhood, "violated social norms." 

There were two trials, with the second resulting in an acquittal. The NAACP celebrated this as a victory, but the story had no happy ending. The family never lived in that house. Both his wife and daughter died shortly after. After several decades of frustration Dr. Sweet himself committed suicide.

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Though Sinclair Lewis worked on Kingsblood Royal 25 years after the Duluth lynchings, it is a near certainty that the memory of that terrible event still wafted about in the air here. Lewis himself was a Minnesotan (Sauk City) and no doubt had been aware of what transpired here in the Northland. Perhaps the details of that mob's behavior helped add authenticity to the race riot that takes place at the end of Kingsblood Royal.

Here's an overview of the story's premise from Goodreads:

A neglected tour de force by the first American to win the Nobel Prize in literature, Kingsblood Royal is a stirring and wickedly funny portrait of a man who resigns from the white race. When Neil Kingsblood, a typical middle-American banker with a comfortable life, makes the shocking discovery that he has African blood, the odyssey that ensues creates an unforgettable portrayal of two Americas, one black, one white.

As timely as when it was first published in 1947, one need only open today's newspaper to see the same issues passionately being discussed between blacks and whites that we find in Kingsblood Royal, says Charles Johnson. Perhaps only now can we fully appreciate Sinclair Lewis's astonishing achievement.

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Those who have read the books state that it was miles ahead of its time. Unfortunately, the insights it offers will probably never be read nowadays because--like Huckleberry Finn and To Kill A Mockingbird--he uses the N-word.

You can read Goodreads Reader Reviews here.

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Related Links

The Ossian Sweet Story at BlackPast.com

Sinclair Lewis In Duluth

The Lynchings In Duluth

Flashback Friday: The Ox-Bow Incident Is a Cautionary Tale for Our Times

“Why do you keep asking me all these questions? You don’t believe anything I tell you.” 

~Anthony Quinn, the accused

I first read The Ox-Bow Incident perhaps three decades ago after reading Walter Van Tilburg Clark's The Track of the Cat. After giving it a second reading as an audio-book a few years back I watched the film starring Henry Fonda, among others.

It's a film about a lynching. It details the manner in which horrible injustices can occur based on heated emotions, rumors and innuendo. 

Today, the spirit of the lynch mob has once again reared its ugly head. It's now called cancel culture. People may not be getting lynched in a literal fashion, but reputations are being smeared and careers damaged. What follows is the review I wrote about this story and film in 2012.

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Raymond Burr made a name for himself playing the attorney Perry Mason in the early Sixties television series. Courtroom dramatics are featured in many Hollywood films as well. An orderly, fair trial for the accused is one of the foundations of a civilized society and all the procedures for helping to insure justice are an essential part of it. 

As any alert and educated person has observed, our current legal system has many flaws, but the French Revolution shows us how frightening our prospects can be when the pendulum swings the other way and we yield to mob justice. The establishing of reliable factual evidence is one of the basic features of a fair trial. Walter Van Tilburg Clark's The Ox-Bow Incident vividly reveals what happens when due process is scuttled in favor a fast result. Published in 1940, it was but three short years before the film reached the silver screen. 

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS 

Hollywood's 1943 Old West re-telling of Clark’s novel is one of many great films in which Henry Fonda fights for justice. In 12 Angry Men we find him cast as a single juror who insists that the easy way out, conviction of the accused, is not warranted until all the evidence is fully examined. In The Ox-Bow Incident, the mob assumes the role of judge and jury, reacting emotionally to a situation based on baseless hearsay. Both films reveal how easily injustice can occur.

Henry Fonda and Harry Morgan 

The Ox-Bow Incident is a black and white Old West drama that takes all of 75 minutes to thread the needle. There are almost no side stories. The plot moves straight forward from the opening scene to its tragic conclusion. 

 

In addition to Fonda we also see a young Henry Morgan, later of Dragnet and M.A.S.H. fame, as well as Anthony Quinn in one of his earliest roles. 

 When I read the book many years ago it made an impression on me. I discovered it after having read The Track of the Cat, another story by Clark that takes place in the Old West. An early line in the movie hints at one of the recurring themes in both these stories. “Why do you suppose he’d be living in this neck of the woods if he didn’t have something to hide?” Fonda declares. 

The Old West was society's fringe. As a kid I liked westerns with gunslingers and shootouts. Hopalong Cassidy was a good diversion. This film is quite distant from your O.K. Corral type of film. No High Noon, no 3:16 To Yuma. No Peckinpaugh bloodletting. It’s a simple story about the consequences of misinformation and mob rule. 

You can be sure this kind of tragedy has played out all over and not just in the Wild West. It happened right here in Duluth in the 1920s. A mob of 1,000 took the law into its own hands, broke into the jail and hanged three black men on one dark night that has now been memorialized as a reminder that we ourselves are not immune to horrific injustice. There was no evidence beyond hearsay and, like this film, there was no happy ending. 

 

One reviewer on imdb.com stated, "The Ox-Bow Incident is a fantastic film. I don't think it's well-remembered now, but I'm thrilled to see it on DVD and hope that it will be rediscovered.” I agree.

Related Link

The Lynchings in Duluth by Michael Fedo

Duluth Protesters March from the Clayton-Jackson-McGhie Memorial to City Hall

Will it be different this time? I think this is the question many people have been asking this past week in response to the death of George Floyd who had been in the custody of the police at the time, in broad daylight and on social media. The Memorial Day incident proved to be a spark that ignited a firestorm that went internationally viral.

The unspoken question many have is this: when all the clamor subsides, will everything go back to normal, as if it were just another news story? I'd like to believe it will be different this time, and there seems to be evidence this is so.

Scott Shackford's article Even Police Unions Trash the Actions of the Cop Who Killed George Floyd begins by asking "Are we seeing a tipping point where police begin to grasp why the public is so outraged?" Police departments rallying around the misconduct of their own is so commonplace that it had become cliche to read it in novels and see it in Hollywood movies. The article in Reason begins with an example of the NYPD defending its own in a similar incident 6 years ago.

This time it really is different. Instead of rallying around their own, police departments from across the country are criticizing and condemning what happened in the George Floyd case.

THE RALLY IN DULUTH
The start point, which seemed relevant, for Saturday afternoon's killing of George Floyd protest was the Clayton-Jackson-McGhie Memorial at the corner of 2nd Avenue East and First Street. For those unfamiliar, this is the location where three black circus workers were lynched 100 years ago this summer.

An elderly woman working her way past me with her walker asked m how many people were there. "100?" she asked. I replied, "Between 500 and a thousand. Probably closer to a thousand." Sunday's Duluth News Tribune estimated the same... about a thousand, a strong show of support for the injustice that occurred at the beginning of last week in Minneapolis.

The Ojibwe drummers and singers near the memorial set the tone as people began arriving to assemble for the march. The crowd continued to fill the intersection, and though not exactly social distancing, they were all masked and conscientious. (There were a couple people handing out face masks for the very few who arrived not wearing one. Stacks of pizzas from Pizza Luce were piled on the sidewalk nearby.

Eventually a woman with a bullhorn drew attention to a pickup truck parked on the avenue just above First Street where Brayleigh Keliin and Joe Carter were standing, accompanied by a large quantity of bottled water for those who might be thirsty on the warm afternoon. A mixed crowd of black, white and Native peoples filled the intersection, in solidarity with the aims of the organizers, to essentially change the systems of injustice that have condoned racism.

Joe Carter, a young black man, welcomed the crowd and introduced Brayleigh. "Duluth, you have come together"" After a round of cheers she said, "I'm scared for my son and all blacks," citing "what living in America is like as a minority." This is why we must demand justice for George Floyd, she said.

Two key words: Justice and Change. "We will have a new tomorrow. We are tired, angry and united," he said. "Racism is a war on the people."

Joe Carter and Brayleigh Keliin were both articulate and passionate, and seemed to project a good-heartedness of spirit.

The bullhorn was passed to Kym Young from Superior, who identified herself as an elder. She spoke about the history of racism in America going back to the founding, and made her appeal to "tear down injustice" and systems of oppression. "We are traumatized and not OK."

A Native woman then spoke briefly about the Ojibwe concept of "Megwiich" which then yielded to the beginning of the march to the St. Louis County Courhouse and City Hall eight blocks away.

What's interesting about this for me personally is that when we moved to Duluth in 1986 and I learned about the lynchings here in 1920, I never understood why the actual event took place here, eight blocks away from the jain? The answer came years later when I learned that City Hall used to be one block below this corner as was the city jail. At that time a mob formed also, perhaps the biggest in our city's history, to carry out a terrible crime... taking the law in their own hands.

It was fitting to see a peaceful march yesterday, to the Courthouse and City Hall where an appeal for justice was made. As part of the gathering there the crowd was asked to kneel for nine minutes, the length of time the officer in Minneapolis knelt on the neck of George Floyd. Try kneeling for nine minutes like that and think about what goes through your head while a voice chokes out "I can't breathe."

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Statements on the Clayton-Jackson-McGhie Memorial

IN ANOTHER PART OF THE CITY there was evidently another gathering of protesters. I only heard about it later on social media and was concerned when still later there were people marching up to Central Entrance and heading toward the Mall. It would not have been a good action, as the point has been made, and I believe Chief Tusken has been remarkably responsive to the minority factions in our community. Things really are different in Duluth.

Rumors were circulating that cars and/or buses were coming from the Twin Cities with more protesters, outsiders that were a concern to city officials. For this reasons a curfew was announced for 10:00 p.m. and earlier for tonight.

The continued looting and burning across the country is heartbreaking. Marvin Gaye's "What's Goin' On?" comes to mind. 

Related Link
Carla Hamilton's Gezielt (Targeted) Creatively Makes Us Think and Gives Us Something To Talk About
A Few Thoughts on the Clayton-Jackson-McGhie Memorial

Courage Made Her Influential: Ida B. Wells

Ida Bell Wells

Last week when I shared A Little Girl’s Dream on my blog here, it prompted me to become more familiar with the stories of African Americans who were early pioneers in the pursuit of freedom and justice. Many of their names were familiar to me but I knew very few of their stories, Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman preeminent examples.

While doing research this week for Black History Month (Feb 1-29) I came across a list titled the 100 Greatest Books by African American Women. It was an enlightening read. This blog post today on Dr. Martin Luther King Day is about one of these women, Ida Bell Wells.

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Ida born into slavery in 1862 during the Civil War in Holly Springs, Mississippi. Her parents were slaves till the 13th Amendment freed them after the war. In 1877 a yellow fever epidemic killed both of her parents while she was away visiting her grandmother.

The authorities would have split the family but she said she could raise her younger siblings, and took a test that enabled her to get a teaching job. Her only previous experience was teaching her younger brothers and sister.

One day Ida took a seat on a train but was forcibly removed to the smoking car. She sued the railroad and actually won a $500 settlement. The headline in the papers read, “Darkey Damsel Gets Damages.”

Naturally, the railroad didn’t like that outcome and took the matter to a higher court where the decision was reversed.

Ida wrote about these experiences for her church newspaper The Living Way, and even though she never received the money, she saw the impact her writing had on people who reacted to what she wrote. She was learning the power of the written word. In 1889 she became part owner of a black-owned newspaper called Free Speech and Headlight. For two more years she also continued teaching until she was dismissed for writing about conditions at the black schools.

Ida learned early the power of the written word, but it was her courage that most stands out. She wrote about what she saw in order that others would know what was going on.

Ida had friends who ran a black grocery store called The People’s Grocery, which was in competition with a white grocery store. An incident occurred which escalated. Three black men were taken to jail. Then, in the middle of the night 75 masked men came, took them from the Shelby County Jail and shot them dead.

It was this event that led Ida to begin investigating and writing about lynchings. After writing an editorial about another incident, her newspaper office was burned to the ground.

Ida married in Chicago and raised a family there.

Ida was in New York at the time her office was looted and destroyed. She was urged not to return and began writing from up North. She later moved to Chicago.

In 1892 Ida Wells began publishing her lynching research in pamphlet form It was titled Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases. The following year her lynching research was compiled in a book titled The Red Record. Frederick Douglass wrote the introduction.

She was invited to speak in England and Scotland. She spoke with eloquence and passion about the unfair treatment of blacks. Her pamphlets included disturbing photos of actual lynchings.

Ida claimed that "ten thousand Negroes have been killed in cold blood, [through lynching] without the formality of judicial trial and legal execution." She believed that the massive rise in such killing after the Civil War was because previous to the war Blacks had more value as “property” of the slaveholders.

Ida found support from white women involved with the battle for women’s rights, becoming friends with Susan B. Anthony and others in the movement.

In 1928 she began working on her autobiography, but it was never finished. She died in 1930 after an influential career. Her story was published posthumously four decades later in 1970. For more than half a century she used her writing skills to promote freedom, safety, and justice.

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Information for this brief bio came from the Walter Dean Myers' book Ida B. Wells: Let the Truth Be Told and Wikipedia.

Related Links
12 Facts About Marting Luther King, Jr. That You May Not Know
Who Killed Dr. Martin Luther King?

Strange Fruit

For the past couple weeks I've been watching and listening to Ken Burns' ten part film series called Jazz. This is a remarkable piece of work. I have enjoyed jazz since introduced to various artists through friends in college, from John Coltrane to Chick Corea, and Miles Davis to Charles Mingus and Pharaoh Sanders. More recently I listened to an eight part lecture series on the history of jazz, which was insightful and informative. But Burns' live footage from the earliest days of twentieth century jazz to the present is an amazing retrospective of the contribution of blacks to Americana.

From the raucous Twenties to the depression era Thirties, jazz was evolving, and reflecting all facets of the culture. Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, Benny Goodman... all of their stories are here.

Purportedly a film series about music, this is really a series about race relations. Some amazing footage of musicians, dancers, and singers has been captured here including the remarkable Billie Holiday. Every once in a while a song cuts through you though, and tears something in your heart. That's what happened to me when Burns gave us raw footage of Billie Holiday singing Strange Fruit. What a daring song for 1939. What heart wrenching lyrics by Lewis Allen.

Strange Fruit
Southern trees bear strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Pastoral scene of the gallant south,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.

Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.

The tragedy is not simply that a man lost his life unjustly. The tragedy is the signal such events would send to every black man in this cultural situation... that he dare not challenge "the Man," dare not himself be a man, raise his head and look into a white man's eyes with defiance, raise the fist. It is difficult to impossible to understand the black power movement of the late Sixties, early Seventies, without understanding the context of Strange Fruit.

The photo at the top of this entry is from a memorial here in Duluth, MN, a photo I took this evening in our City by the Lake. Most people associate racial violence as a Southern phenomenon. The memorial here is a remembrance that it can, and did, happen here. In 1920, three black circus workers were lynched downtown by an irate, irrational mob. Hepped up by hearsay, they broke into the jail and brought these men's lives to a sudden end. Historians believe they were almost certainly innocent, but the tragic affair demonstrated that "it can happen here."

Race relations in America are a complicated affair and, like Lewis Allen's evocative lament, so very sad.

May we never forget.