100 years ago today, Leo Frank became the only American Jew to be lynched — setting up KKK’s rebirth [View all]

[DonViejo]

Leo Frank was murdered 100 years ago Monday in the only known lynching of an American Jew.

A group of 25 armed men broke into the Georgia State Prison in Milledgeville on Aug. 16, 1915, where they kidnapped Frank — who had been convicted on shaky evidence of murdering a teenage girl who worked at the factory he managed.

Mary Phagan, a 13-year-old who left home three years earlier to find work, was found strangled in the basement of the National Pencil Company — where she had gone on Confederate Memorial Day 1913 to pick up her paycheck.

Frank, who was born in Texas but educated in the North, was quickly identified as a suspect and convicted despite the key witness for the prosecution — a black janitor at the factory — repeatedly changing his testimony and even admitting he made up parts of his story.

Defense attorneys also relied on prejudice to make their case, arguing that janitor John “Conley is a plain, beastly, drunken, filthy, lying n****r with a spreading nose through which probably tons of cocaine have probably been sniffed.”

But ultimately, the dynamics in the rapidly industrializing South, where workers came to resent their Northerner employers, spelled doom for Frank — who was sentenced to death.

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http://www.rawstory.com/2015/08/100-years-ago-today-leo-frank-became-the-only-american-jew-to-be-lynched-setting-up-kkks-rebirth/