The Duluth Disgrace.

The Duluth Disgrace

The Duluth mob that lynched three Negroes, one of them perhaps innocent, has put an ineffaceable stain on the name of Minnesota.
It was the color of the three prisoners that made them victims of the mob. Had they been white, they might have been the objects of reprobation for the crime with which they were charged–but they would no doubt have been left to the calm processes of the law.
The sudden flaming up of racial passion, which is the reproach of the South, may also occur, as we now learn in the bitterness of humiliation in Minnesota.
This is the first lynching in Minnesota in twenty years, and the very first lynching of Negroes. In fact, only two lynchings are recorded in the whole history of the State.
It would appear that the civil authorities at Duluth fought stoutly to prevent the crime the mob was bent on committing. Whether they fought with good judgment may be a question. The order not to fire on the mob, if given as the press accounts say, may have prevented the loss of human life. But would it not have been better that a few of the crazed criminals who sought to take into their own hands the administration of justice should fall than that this blot on the fair escutcheon of Minnesota should have been permitted? One man of stout heart has been known to balk a mob of its prey.
But the damage is done. What now remains is to punish the men who undertook to usurp the powers of court, judge, jury and executioner. No time has been lost in setting the machinery in motion. We can only record the earnest hope that nothing will be left undone to bring the lynch law murderers to justice.
Duluth and St. Louis county as least owe it to the rest of the State to demonstrate that those who invoke lynch law, those who participate in mob rule, do so at the peril of swift condemnation and adequate punishment.