In 1915, Leo Frank, the Jewish manager of Atlanta’s National Pencil Company, was wrongly convicted of murder. Following a trial steeped in anti-Semitism, Frank was kidnapped from prison, driven seven hours across Georgia, and lynched in a park. The merciless mob included a former governor, as well as former and current mayors and sheriffs who posed for photos with Frank’s dangling corpse.
During Frank’s sham trial, shouts of “hang the Jew” roared from the gallery and were reported nationally. His murder — a vicious spectacle animated by anti-Semitic scapegoating — conveyed a message of hate. It provoked the exodus of nearly half of Atlanta’s Jewish community, the largest in the south at that time.