CHAPTER 9
Deception can be a perceived or literal means of survival. People create lies to further their own agendas or simply to keep out of trouble. I’d grown accustomed to lies and deception in my family, and over time I’d grown equally used to the reassuring outcome when the truth eventually emerged. It never really took much effort, finding the real story. No one in my family has ever really been good at keeping secrets. For my sister Karen, the truth rests just behind her lips, like the air inside an overly inflated balloon. The slightest hint of suspicion is a pinprick that bursts the truth forward, the relief of confession the reward she’s been wanting so badly.
My mother will often weave her inventions like a fine tapestry; the term “lie like a rug” describes it most appropriately. I inherited this talent from her. We prefer to avoid complication by covering with a white lie, a minor story to explain our forgetfulness or our lack of efforts. Rather than simply say, “I couldn’t make it,” or “I just wasn’t feeling up to it,” we feel compelled to spin a tale that will explain, without a doubt, that we had no other option but to make the choice we did. My tooth broke on an ice cube. I had to wait an hour to get it fixed. The car broke down on the way back. We pack our stories with impossible detail, choosing to embellish an untruth rather than say nothing, thinking that we are doing our listener an unselfish service by not requiring him to fill in his own details. I’ve made great progress in overcoming this tendency, I’m happy to say. I think both my mother and I have. We’ve learned over time most people don’t need detailed reasons for the trivial choices we’ve made that may have affected them. A simple apology will suffice and if they need more, it’s not our problem.
My father builds lies like an apartment building might be built in haste and desperation, thrown together with no real foresight or skill. The foundation is weak, crudely constructed. Each story added places greater strain on that initial foundation until the weight of that last lie is simply too much. The entire structure gives way, crashes down around him and he is exposed. The greater problem is that too often my father continues to build, unaware or refusing to acknowledge that there is nothing left on which to construct his world. His credibility is laid to waste and only the most desperately needy who still surround him continue to live within his created fantasy.
I think it’s human nature to lie, to use our imagination to create a scenario that will serve as an escape hatch from a misdeed, or perhaps create the dream of a truth that we wish might have been. My son tells me that he didn’t take a cookie, yet crumbs adorn his face like a beard. He wants to avoid getting punished. A student of mine claims he left his homework at home. He’s hoping for another day to complete it. No real harm done by those actions or the lies, other than a small lack of trust from the recipient. It’s not like someone died.
But sometimes a lie can lead to the worst of consequences. A lie can hit a nerve in the sharpest of ways, inciting an insatiable hunger for revenge and retribution, deafening the listener to any sense of reason. A lie can divide and cripple an entire population: laws can be passed, a culture can be altered, an entire community can be destroyed by a single false accusation. It happened that night in June of 1920. Two teenagers created a lie that would result in the deaths of three men. No official reason for them having told this story has ever been given. And that lie would remain dormant, festering and poisoning generations to come.
Years after the night I discovered this story, I would have the opportunity to speak with many people who from their own perspectives helped give me insight into why it had all happened. At this point, though, I could only try to formulate my own understanding. Not only did these two individuals concoct a story of rape, not once did they waver in their account. Why? What was it about Irene Tusken and Jimmie Sullivan that, even as their own stories collapsed around them, crushing others in the scattered debris, caused them to hold firm?
For me, the greatest irony of all is that in spite of literally hundreds of pages of recorded documents—court transcripts, detectives’ reports, newspaper articles, interviews, Michael Fedo’s meticulously researched book, The Lynchings in Duluth—that question has never been answered. I dove completely into the mountains of paperwork, broke down the details point by point, and reconstructed them into a narrative that came alive for me. And in this quest I was able to place myself as closely beside my great-grandfather—as close to the lynchings—as I possibly could.
CHAPTER 10
The number of people coming to West Duluth from the outlying neighborhoods had been unusual that night. The number of passengers crowding onto the streetcars always rose and fell throughout the day; weekend nights could be especially busy when there was a good show playing at either the Orpheum or Lyceum theaters. But the night of June 14, 1920, had not been a typical Monday for Duluthians. As in most American towns of the time, when the circus came calling, there would be no other activity in mind. Advance men had come through town weeks earlier, pasting up posters and lithographs announcing the coming menagerie of wild animals, sideshow performers, clowns, and acrobats. The ninety-seventh tour of the John Robinson Circus’s Ten Biggest Shows had been touted as the biggest show that the busy Minnesota shipping and mill town had seen in recent years. For Irene Tusken, just eighteen and fresh out of business school, the circus would have been the perfect place to steal away with her two girlfriends and, more important, to meet up with a particular boy.
Irene said that she left her house at about 8:00 PM. She and her two companions, Eudora and Dorothy, walked the three blocks or so to Grand Avenue, climbed aboard the streetcar, and rode eastward a mile to the Vernon Street stop just past the circus grounds, backtracking a block or so to the open fields west of the Missabe Ore Docks. The looming clouds that had been threatening rain all day lingered without effect. Irene marched intently with her friends toward the huge archway and commanding wooden sign that beckoned curious patrons to view the wondrous sights contained beyond the grand entrance. The litany of the barkers rose above the banter of the crowd and the lolling organ-grinder’s tunes, luring wanderers to the sideshow tents to see Madame X’s Snake Pit, the Human Skeleton, and Sweet Nellie Lane, the fat lady. In the menagerie, patrons could marvel at Madame de Marce’s Educated Baboons, troupes of trained seals, high-stepping ménage horses, and Virginia, the Smallest Elephant in the World.
It probably wasn’t the twinkling canopy of lights that caught Irene’s eyes, though; it was more likely the handsome young man standing just under the archway grinning at her. Dashing, sly, and completely full of himself, Jimmie Sullivan was the kind of boy that many a young lady wanted and most parents dreaded. With a penchant for pranks and defying adult authority, Jimmie had come to appreciate the luxuries that popularity and privilege could get a person and he made full use of those advantages whenever he could. The cigarette dangling from his lips raised the ire of morals-conscious adults and the interest of eager schoolgirls, and he’d stamp it out for no one.
The eldest of five children and the first of only two daughters, Irene had both forged a trail for her younger siblings and tested the limits of her beleaguered parents. William Tusken, a veteran Duluth mail carrier, had no doubt heard through the grapevine on his local route that his daughter and young Mr. Sullivan had been stepping out together and he’d have surely been well aware of Jimmie’s reputation. Folks around the West End talked freely and the gossip was too good to ignore. A shoe merchant who was interviewed about Jimmie’s character, a man referred to in an investigator’s report as Mr. Blodgett, had been less than flattering in his portrayal. “Mr. Sullivan is a man of evil repute,” he’d opined. A year earlier, Jimmie had broken into Mr. Blodgett’s summer cottage on Lake Superior with a party of other young men and girls and ransacked the place, smashing furniture and tearing up the linens. Another man, a Mr. Pearson, corroborated the story. He’d gone to the cottage with Mr. Blodgett and witnessed the damage himself, including “empty beer and whiskey bottles all over the place.” Irene wasn’t spared the rumor mill. Mr. Blodgett readily repeated what was frequently whispered among the other shop owners on West and Central