FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 15, 2019
Clayton Jackson McGhie Memorial, Inc. Announces the 2020 Commemoration Events
365 days from today, we will commemorate the 100th year since Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, and Isaac McGhie were falsely accused, taken by force from the old Duluth jail, and lynched by an estimated 10,000 community members at the intersection where the Clayton Jackson McGhie Memorial now stands.
It took decades for the story to be revisited as a community. With the formation of Clayton Jackson McGhie Memorial, Inc., an effort was made to erect a memorial and show that the lives of these men mattered and that this history still impacts us today. We now have an opportunity to build on that by bringing our community together to remember, reflect, and transform.
During the year 2020, we will commemorate these three men and continue to work toward our mission of fostering peace, racial equity, and growth. We will have events leading up to a gathering on June 15, 2020; exactly 100 years to the day from when their lives were taken. That evening, we will ask more than 10,000 community members and visitors to join us at the intersection of the memorial and in the surrounding streets, to listen to our keynote speaker: Bryan Stevenson.
Bryan Stevenson is the founder and Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), a human rights organization in Montgomery, Alabama. Mr. Stevenson is a widely acclaimed public interest lawyer who has dedicated his career to helping the poor, the incarcerated, and the condemned. Under his leadership, EJI has won major legal challenges eliminating excessive and unfair sentencing, exonerating innocent death row prisoners, confronting abuse of the incarcerated and the mentally ill, and aiding children prosecuted as adults. Mr. Stevenson and his staff have won reversals, relief or release from prison for over 135 wrongly condemned prisoners on death row and won relief for hundreds of others wrongly convicted or unfairly sentenced. Mr. Stevenson has argued and won multiple cases at the U.S. Supreme Court, including a 2019 ruling protecting condemned prisoners who suffer from dementia and a landmark 2012 ruling that banned mandatory life-without-parole sentences for all children 17 or younger. Mr. Stevenson has initiated major new anti-poverty and anti-discrimination efforts that challenge inequality in America. He led the creation of two highly acclaimed cultural sites which opened in 2018, The Legacy Museum and The National Memorial for Peace and Justice. The new national landmark institutions chronicle the legacy of slavery, lynching and racial segregation and the connection to mass incarceration and contemporary issues of racial bias. Mr. Stevenson’s work has won him numerous awards including 35 honorary doctorates, the MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Prize and the ABA Medal, the American Bar Association’s highest honor. He is a graduate of the Harvard Law School and the Harvard School of Government and the author of the award-winning New York Times bestseller, Just Mercy.
This is a chance for us to come together and to continue to transform our community. Will you join us?
To learn more, visit cjm2020.org or contact 2020@claytonjacksonmcghie.org.
Event Contact
Jordon Moses, 2020 Event Planner – 2020@claytonjacksonmcghie.org – cjm2020.org