Elmer Jackson
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Murdered in: Duluth | June 15, 1920
Elmer Jackson was born on April 19, 1897, in Pennytown, Missouri. Pennytown was one of the very first freed slave settlements where former slaves purchased, held title to, and lived upon their own land.
The Clayton Jackson McGhie Memorial in Duluth, Minnesota, honors the victims of a lynching there in 1920.
Elmer was a son to Clifton and Rachel (Williams) Jackson, and brother to Clifton Jr., Sarah, Mack and Rachel. It is believed that Elmer and his family moved from Pennytown to Topeka, Kansas, sometime around 1916. There, Elmer and his father Clifton worked at the Santa Fe locomotive shops. Both Elmer and his brother Mack occasionally left home to go and work for the traveling circus companies. The 1920 John Robinson Show would be the last one Elmer Jackson would ever work.
In 2003 the community of Duluth unveiled the Clayton Jackson McGhie Memorial. At the time it was erected, it was the most significant memorial to lynching victims in the United States.
Contributed by Warren Read, great-grandson of one of the Duluth lynchers.
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