In the post-lynching period, Duluth’s already small number of African Americans grew smaller — and has never grown to more than 3 percent of the city’s population. Jeanine Weekes Schroer, an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Minnesota Duluth called Duluth a “sundown town” — a place where its lack of diversity seems accidental, but can be tied to historic events. While creating this podcast, multiple racially-motivated events happened in the United States — and as close as Minneapolis, where George Floyd died after a police officer detained him by kneeling on his neck for nearly nine minutes.

“I think lynchings happen today all the time,” Weekes Schroer said. “That is to say, the practice of white people who take themselves to be acting with moral authority, ending the lives of brown and black people that in ways, that in retrospect, or even at the moment in the eyes of everyone else involved seem clearly to be the opposite of carrying out of justice — seem clearly to be to the rest of us violations of justice.”

The Duluth Lynchings is edited by Samantha Erkkila and is a product of the Duluth News Tribune. This episode includes reporting by Samantha Erkkila, Brady Slater, Melinda Lavine, Christa Lawler and Clint Austin. Excerpts of books and newspapers are read aloud by Barrett Chase.

Music for the podcast is “We Three Kings,” composed by “Rudy” Perrault and performed by the Gichigami Piano Trio with Josh Aerie on cello, Sam Black on piano and Laurie Bastian on Violin.