Perfect Duluth Day

Duluth history used to illustrate white privilege on Netflix show

In the new Netflix series Colin in Black & White, former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick serves as the narrator for his own story of growing up in California’s Central Valley with white adoptive parents. At the very beginning of the third episode, a modified version of a photograph taken at the 1920 lynching of Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, and Isaac McGhie in Duluth is used as part of a montage explaining the concept of white privilege.

The narration leading up to the image states, “White laborers were admitted freely with all classes of white people to public functions, public parks, and the best schools. The police were drawn from their ranks, and the courts, dependent on their votes, treated them with such leniency as to encourage lawlessness.” The image appears at the 50-second mark of the third episode.