Welcome to Most Notorious, I'm Eric Rivenes.

My guest, Michael Fido, has made the tragedy we're going to be talking about today, his

life's work. He started this project decades ago, conducting first-hand account interviews,

doing research and gaining insight, little by little, until he was able to put together

the book we are going to be discussing today. The lynchings in Duluth, which will be released

in a new edition by the Minnesota Historical Society Press on March 15th. That is our

topic for today. Thank you so much for your time today, Mr. Michael Fido. Your book is an

important piece of work in that you single-handedly brought this absolutely horrific event into

the public consciousness again. When did you first hear about the Duluth lynchings and how did

this book come about? I first heard it from my mother when I couldn't have been more than

nine or ten years old. I have lost, through the years, the context for that. I have no idea why

she would have brought it up. I speculate that it may have had something to do with the fact that

that we lived about a mile or so from where that took place, but I really don't know. I can't

remember why she told me that. In any case, it was just kind of there in my head. I knew that this had

happened. As a number adult in my early to mid-twenties, I began writing. At some time about

1970-71, some were back in there. I thought that I was going to write a novel, which I've also

forgotten about. I don't remember what my storyline would have been, but I do remember that at one

point, I thought that I would use this lynching as a scene in the chapter and the main character in

this book, whose novel was going to be there as a witness. In order to get things correct,

even though the account would have been fictional, the actuality of the event needed to be accurate,

and I tried to find the book that I assumed someone had written about this episode 50 years

before. I learned rather quickly that there was no such book. Libraries had not only never heard

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