Ray Widstrand thought he had nothing to fear from moving into a black neighborhood on the East Side of St. Paul. This young white guy and aspiring filmmaker thought he had nothing to fear when he decided to take a Sunday night stroll through his adopted part of town.

Nothing to fear from a crowd of 50 black people fighting outside a nearby party. So he stopped to check it out. Soon, however, the mob’s attention turned on him.

“The first person who struck him had hit him with a can in a sock,” said one witness in a police report. “The man went down and a ‘whole bunch of little eastside boys’ began to kick the man. She saw them strip him of his pants and go through the pockets.”