August 17, 1915
Leo Frank was lynched by a mob in Marietta, Georgia, one of the worst incidents of anti-Semitism of the period. Frank had been convicted of the rape and murder of 13-year-old Mary Phagan, who worked at the pencil factory where he was a superintendent. Frank was the last person to see Phagan alive, but there were many questions about whether he was in fact guilty. In 1986, Frank was granted a pardon because of the failure of authorities to protect him. Reportedly, half of the Jews living in Georgia left after the lynching, which was closely related to the revival of the Ku Klux Klan, which was newly organized at Stone Mountain, Georgia, three months after the lynching. The Klan in this period directed its hatred against Catholics and Jews almost as much as African-Americans, particularly in states outside the South.
