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

Handwritten Lyrics to Dylan's Desolation Row: Sneak Preview of the May William Pagel Exhibit at Karpeles

The weeks have been barreling along like a freight train this year. Hard to believe we're just a week away from the month of May and the kickoff of the Duluth Homegrown Festival, an eight-day celebration of local music and related enthusiasms. The end of the month is eight-day Duluth Dylan Fest, a perfect set of bookends to one of the Northland's nicest time of the year.

Dylan Fest has added quite a few new events this year, one of the most significant being the public display of a number of items from William Pagel's private Dylan memorabilia collection. In addition to collecting backstage passes, letters, Dylan books and recordings, he also purchased the duplex in Duluth's Central Hillside where young Robert Zimmerman lived the first six year of his life, walking distance from Nettleton Elementary School. For the first time a small portion of the Pagel collection will be shared with the public at the Karpeles Manuscript Library Museum. This exhibit will be on display throughout the month of May and not just during Dylan Fest.

There's at least one item to be displayed that I am not at liberty to talk about, an item so rare I'm not sure anyone even knows of its existence. There's another that will settle an old score regarding a matter of Dylan history.

One of the many documents you'll see if you visit are the original handwritten lyrics from Desolation Row. Each displayed item will have a printed legend describing its significance. Here's an example of the kinds of stories that will accompany the documents.

Desolation Row handwritten lyrics 

This memorial now stands at the site of the hanging. 

Recorded on August 4th, 1965, this song closed out Dylan’s sixth studio album, Highway 61 Revisited. It was the longest song on the album at eleven minutes twenty-one seconds. The song is predominantly acoustic, although an earlier take with electric instrumentation was recorded on July 29th, 1965. Some have suggested that the first verse could have been influenced by a tragic event in the city of Duluth’s history, in which three African Americans were lynched in downtown Duluth. Postcards were sold of the lynching, and the three men worked for a carnival passing through Duluth. The first verse states:

They’re selling postcards of the hanging
They’re painting the passports brown,
The beauty parlor is filled with sailors
The circus is in town
Here comes the blind commissioner
They’ve got him in a trance
One hand is tied to the tight rope walker
The other is in his pants
And the riot squad they’re restless
They need somewhere to go
As Lady and I look out tonight
From Desolation Row

There are nine more verses in the song. Rolling Stone Magazine ranked the song at #187 in their “500 Greatest Songs of All Time”.

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If you're coming in from out of town, the monument pictured here can be found at the corner of Second Avenue East and First Street, on the corner where this tragic event occurred. It is the only memorial to a lynching in the United States. May we never forget. (For further reading see Michael Fedo's The Lynchings in Duluth.

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For highlights of this year's Duluth Dylan Fest visit this page or follow along on the Fest's Facebook page.

Meantime, life goes on all around you. Enjoy the music. 

Fifty Years Ago Today This Martyr For Civil Rights Took a Bullet

On Monday the Duluth News Tribune printed an article about the Clayton Jackson McGhie Memorial memorial that was completed and commemorated in our town ten years ago. This one of a kind memorial is aimed at helping us not forget the three black men who were lynched on this corner June 15, 1920.
According to the article , art historian LaTonya Autry will be speaking this Friday "at the 10th annual Day of Remembrance at the CJM memorial, part of a week of activities run by the memorial board."

Lynchings around the country were all too common a century ago. The reason Ms. Autry returned to Duluth this week is because our memorial here is uncommon. It was a senseless killing. A memorial like this reminds us of who we've been, makes an appeal to think different, be different, and to not forget.

On this date a half century ago there was another senseless killing. Medgar Evers, a man dedicated to empowering Southern blacks through the exercise of democracy, took a bullet in the back of his head as he was walking from his car to his front door. There are memorials in Jackson, Miss. now as well, but it was Bob Dylan's "memorial in song" that brought this event -- along with the power constructs that made it inevitable --into the spotlight of national attention so we'd never forget.

The opening line of the song rings out with a poetic potency that is arresting. "A bullet from the back of a bush took Medgar Evers' blood."  As the story unfolds it reveals. (1)

He knew he was putting his life on the line by attempting to alter existing power structures and to right wrongs. What surprises so many people here in the Northland is that the wrongs Evers fought against were taking place somewhere else and we just don't associate this kind of blatant racial violence with our home town. We'd be more comfortable it remained in its place.

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. (2)

The memorial downtown reminds us that no place is immune. The world is broken and for this we must occasionally grieve so that we can move forward with hope.

(1) Only a Pawn In Their Game  
(2) Strange Fruit