The Legacy of a Lynching
On the afternoon of June 15, 1920, Louis Dondino drove his one-ton green pickup truck back and forth along the streets of Duluth, Minnesota, shouting to onlookers to “Join the necktie party.” The night before, Irene Tusken, 19, and her boyfriend, Jimmie Sullivan, 18, both of Dondino’s working class West Duluth neighborhood, attended the one-day stand of the John Robinson Circus. There, the couple claimed, six black circus workers robbed them at gunpoint and raped Tusken. The next morning, a physician examining Tusken determined she showed no signs of assault, yet the pair stuck to their story. Police responded by apprehending several black roustabouts from the departing circus train, hauling six to the jail on Superior Street, the city’s main drag.
By nightfall, as many as one in ten of the city’s 100,000 residents had gathered in front of the jail, with police attempting a futile defense under orders not to use their guns. The mob broke through, beating the prisoners and propping them up in a brief kangaroo
