Nearly 100 years ago, Max Mason was sentenced to 30 years in prison for his role in the alleged rape of a white woman in Minnesota. Just three days before the 100-year anniversary of his conviction and the infamous Duluth lynchings that came with the case, Mason was posthumously pardoned.
CBS reported that in 1920, Mason was in Duluth as part of a traveling circus. He and three other black men were accused of raping a 19-year-old white woman that year. The other three men, Isaac McGhie, Elmer Jackson, and Elias Clayton, were all lynched. Mason was the only one sentenced to prison, even though a doctor found no evidence that the white woman was raped.
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