MINNEAPOLIS — Max Mason did not live to see the day that his name was cleared.
On Friday, his case became Minnesota’s first posthumous pardon.
Mason was one of several black men, accused and arrested for something he did not do back in Duluth in the 1920’s.
His prosecution and conviction came a month after an angry, racist mob of white men lynched three black men for a crime they were all accused of, with almost no evidence.
Back in 1920 a teenage white woman, Irene Tusken, accused “a group of Black men” of raping her.
Word traveled fast and again, without evidence, black men were arrested en masse and three were murdered while 10,000 town residents watched, many cheering, more smiling.
Mason was tried and convicted a month after the lynching, but he was paroled four years later.
He applied for pardon many times, but it never came.
Until today, nearly 100 years later.
Minneapolis attorney Jerry Blackwell worked hard to see this day of justice come.
Watch the story above as he describes how we got here.