Living in the White, Gray, and Black

ETHEL RAY

LIVING IN THE WHITE, GRAY, AND BLACK

By Karen Felecia Nance

This time of year, we as BIPOC Minnesotans as well as those across the country pay tribute to the memory of George Floyd and our ongoing efforts to push back against the forces that seek to rewrite history, erase our legacy, and further disenfranchise the underserved communities. As it happens, let us remember another occasion some 100 years earlier—the lynching of Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, and Isaac McGhie in Duluth, Minnesota. In this milieu, the life of Ethel Ray, who becomes the first Black police officer in the state and goes on to make significant contributions to the community, is shaped. In honor of her grandmother, Karen Felecia Nance shares her story: Ethel Ray–Living in the White, Gray, and Black.

Born in 1899 in Duluth, Ethel Ray was the youngest of four children born to William Henry Ray, a Black Southern man from North Carolina, and Inga Nordquist, a Swedish immigrant woman. Her older sister Ora died at the age of seven from pneumonia; after her treatment by the white racist doctor, William Henry developed a mistrust of doctors. As an interracial family, her parents kept them sheltered from the outside community in the Central-Hillside neighborhood. When it came to school, Ethel’s brothers could pass for white. She could not, which made her a target for racist attitudes. When she graduated from Duluth Central High School in 1917, among her many skills were stenography and perfect scores on civil service exams.

William Henry attempted to start an NAACP chapter in Duluth as a counterpoint to the Ku Klux Klan chapter. Due to the hostile environment there, Black residents were reluctant to join out of fear and the lack of numbers. As a young woman, Ethel found work in Moose Lake as an investigator and stenographer when forest fires ravaged the area; even so, she was stereotyped, denied the opportunities given to white girls. To give his daughter greater exposure to African American culture in the U.S., he took her on a pilgrimage to Chicago, New York, and Charlotte. The pilgrimage was a pivotal moment in Ethel’s life, and it solidified her identity as a Black woman.

Ethel was 21 and living in Moose Lake on June 15, 1920 when three circus roustabouts—Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, and Isaac McGhie—were charged with raping a white girl, Irene Tusken. The allegation was a lie, but it was enough to trigger a riot that resulted in the lynching of the three Black men. This second pivotal moment fueled Ethel’s desire to leave Duluth.

In 1923, she left Duluth for the Twin Cities, where she became the first Black police officer for the city of Minneapolis. She would go on to become an administrative assistant in the NAACP, a secretary to W.E.B. DuBois, and many other positions of service to the Black community in such places as Kansas City, New York, Chicago, Seattle, and San Francisco.

Through poems and journal entries from her grandmother and great-grandfather, Karen Nance gives the reader a vivid picture of strength through adversity during Ethel’s early years. Her connection with the church was her rock; it strengthened leadership in her. Ethel’s brothers knew there was no future in staying in Duluth, leaving it behind to pass as white and its cost. The events of 1920 shattered the myth that a lynching could never occur in Duluth, and it spurred Nellie Francis to draft what would become Minnesota’s anti-lynching law.

My grandparents migrated to Duluth from Kentucky five years after the lynching, where my mother and her five siblings grew up. However, my grandmother never talked about it; my mother did in her later years in passing. The accounts of these events by Willam Henry Ray and Ethel Ray Nance make this a compelling read, written with love, respect, and regard.

Ethel Ray: Living in the White, Gray, and Black is available through In Black Ink.

Thank you, Karen, for sharing this rich and powerful history of your grandmother. If we don’t share our stories, who will?