The Lynching of Leo Frank, August 17, 1915.

A Lynching in Georgia: The Leo Frank Affair

In April 1913 the body of the murdered thirteen-year-old Mary Phagen was found in the basement of an Atlanta pencil factory. The factory's manager, Leo Frank was accused of the murder. After a sensational and flawed trial that helped stoke a firestorm of hysteria and prejudice against Frank, he was sentenced to death. When Georgia's governor, uncertain of Frank's guilt, commuted his sentence to life imprisonment in 1915, Frank was kidnapped from jail and lynched.