ISSUES THAT WON’T GO AWAY IT HAS BEEN 100 YEARS SINCE IMMIGRANT OLLI KINKKONEN WAS FOUND HANGING DEAD

BY TONY BENNETT

In downtown Duluth, there�s a quote emblazoned on the Clayton Jackson McGhie memorial by Edmund Burke, the 18th century Dublin-born philosopher. It comes from the time of the trial of an English politician named Warren Hastings, although that context matters little.

“An event has happened,” go Burke�s words, “upon which it is difficult to speak, and impossible to be silent.”

The quote is from 1789, so it has nothing to do with the horrific lynchings of Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson and Isaac McGhie, three black circus workers passing through Duluth who were accused of the rape of a woman and lynched by a crowd of thousands on June 15, 1920. The three men were ripped from their jail cells and hanged from a pole just feet from where, today, their memorial stands. But this quote could also be applied to the tragic death of Olli Kinkkonen, whom some believe to be the first person lynched in Duluth�s history.

The details of Kinkkonen�s story are vague in certain places, but the main points are enough to tell the tale. He was a Finnish immigrant who decided to renounce his U.S. citizenship in the run-up to World War I, and, as a result, he was snatched from the boarding house in which he resided by a group of people calling themselves either the “Knights of Loyalty” or the “Knights of Liberty,” who proceeded to tar and feather Kinkkonen for his pacifism, his race, his socialist beliefs, or some combination of those factors. For two weeks, Kinkkonen was nowhere to be found. Local headlines called him a “tarred alien.” Upon the discovery of his body hanging from a tree branch in the Lester Park area, the news suggested he had taken his own life. Kinkkonen was buried in a grave that went unmarked in Park Hill Cemetery, not far from where the bodies of three black circus workers would be buried only two years later. In 1993, long after his violent death, Kinkkonen�s grave was marked by a Finnish group. “Victim of Warmongers,” the stone reads, a statement of truth and anger.

The reasons Kinkkonen�s story isn�t more well-known are probably many, and are probably complicated. His death was quieter than the deaths of the three men who were slain two years later. There were no national headlines admonishing Duluthians for allowing such a heinous hate crime, as there were with Clayton, Jackson and McGhie. Whatever the reason, his tale has gone undertold. This Sept. 18 marked the 100th anniversary — if such a joyful word can be used to describe such a sickening event — of Kinkkonen�s death.

The question is: Is there anything that Duluthians can learn from the story of Olli Kinkkonen, a whole century later? Is there a lesson that can be taught to people in 2018? Local historians say yes, and they aren�t afraid to draw a number of conclusions to the tone and tenor of the present political and social climate in America and around the world. The prevalence of anti-immigrant sentiment and spread of casual jingoism in the wake of events like the death of Heather Heyer, who died while protesting a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville in 2017, or in the ongoing talk of “illegals” are, to some, extensions of the same hatred that 100 years ago took the life of a peaceful Finn who took a stand.

Tony Dierckins of Zenith City Press points out that 1918 was a time of great upheaval in Duluth. There was the Spanish Flu, World War I and the Cloquet fire, among other things.

“It was an explosive time all around,” Dierckins said. “The Olli Kinkkonen stories get lost in that.

“I see a lot of similarities and reflections in today,” Dierckins said, bringing up the ongoing firestorm about football player Colin Kaepernick as an example of how peaceful protest can produce anger in some. “Back then, Olli Kinkkonen had fled Finland because he didn�t want to get involved in the war in Europe, and then, he comes to the United States, and they want to force him to participate. I can see the parallels to today — they question his patriotism.”

“He wasn�t even particularly active in opposing the war,” said University of Wisconsin-Superior history professor Joel Sipress. “What we know is that people who thought of themselves as super-patriots grabbed him. At that time, people from Finland were viewed by a lot of people as subversives or un-American. We see a similar thing, today — there are groups that are being targeted.”

Ask Sipress what makes people in 2018 different than those in 1918, and he points to the death of Heyer. “She was targeted for her own political activity. It�s the same mentality.”

It�s a bleak thought. What, then, can Duluthians do to prevent such occurrences in the future? “One thing to learn is the dangers of how this gets stirred up,” Sipress said. “The people who did this, they didn�t just come up with this out of their own heads. They were responding to cues being sent to them by the country�s leadership.”

“You had guys like Congdon speaking in front of church groups and beating the war drum,” Dierckins said, referring to the moneyed figure of Duluth�s past who built Glensheen Mansion. Then, as now, Dierckins said, there are people who look to charge the citizenry in an emotional way, turning differences into battle lines.

“I think it�s more timely than ever to learn the Olli Kinkkonen story,” Dierckins said. “Patriotism was a divisive thing, then, and it�s become a divisive thing, now.”

Time will tell if Kinkkonen�s sad tale will become more well-known in the region in one way or another, but it�s surely worth marking the century since his murder, if just to remind ourselves that intolerance is not a dead language, and that the things that divide us haven�t changed a whole lot in the last hundred years. Perhaps, though, by looking back, we can get a better view of our present.

Tony Bennett is a Duluth freelance writer.