In this May 30, 2020 photo, a protestor holds up a photo of George Floyd in front of the Clayton, Jackson, McGhie Memorial as part of a large protest in Duluth, Minn. (Alex Kormann/Star Tribune via AP)
A Black man imprisoned in Minnesota a century ago in a case that included the infamous lynchings of three other Black men for the alleged rape of a white woman received a posthumous pardon Friday, with Gov. Tim Walz connecting the historic injustice to the death of George Floyd.
Minnesota’s pardons board voted 3-0 to pardon Max Mason, one of several traveling circus workers accused in the 1920 case.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz provides an update on the state’s response to COVID-19 during a news conference on Monday, April 20, 2020 in St. Paul, Minn. (Scott Takushi, pool / MediaNews Group / St. Paul Pioneer Press via Getty Images)
The allegation came from a young man who attended the circus with 19-year-old Irene Tusken in June 1920 and who said six workers forced the couple at gunpoint into a ravine and raped Tusken, according to a case summary prepared for the board.
Twenty known lynching deaths have occurred in the state’s history, according to the Minnesota Historical Society, but Clayton, Jackson and McGhie were the only black victims.
Treasure Jackson, a founding member of the group that erected the Clayton Jackson McGhie Memorial in downtown Duluth, said the 1920 lynchings and Floyd’s death last month after a white officer pressed his knee into the handcuffed black man’s neck reflect a pattern of “dominance over the lives and the bodies and the spirits of black people” that still persists.
