THE OBSERVER
by Michael Sainato
August 17, 2015

One hundred years ago today, on August 17, 1915, Leo Frank was kidnapped from prison in Milledgeville, Georgia by the Knights of Mary Phagan, a revitalized Ku Klux Klan group of prominent men from Cobb County, Georgia, where Frank was transported to nearly 170 miles away, and lynched. Thousands of African-Americans were lynched throughout the south in the early 20th century without any sort of reprimand to those that committed these atrocities, often-authoritative leaders of their own communities. The case of Leo Frank was no different in that regard, yet the circumstances of Frank’s infamous murder and imprisonment were rife with anti-semitism, class warfare, sensationalism, and hysteria, which engulfed early 20th century America. READ MORE