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Article: Renewed relevance of a lynching.(Local)
- Article from:
- The Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk, VA)
- Article date:
- November 4, 2009
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2009 The Virginian Pilot-Ledger Star. All rights reserved. Reproduced with the permission of the Dialog Corporation by Gale Group. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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By STEVE ONEY
ON AUG. 17, 1915, Leo Frank, a Cornell-educated Jewish industrialist, was lynched just outside Atlanta. The atrocity marked the culmination of an ugly conflict that began with the 1913 murder of a child laborer named Mary Phagan, who toiled for pennies an hour in Atlanta's National Pencil Factory.
Frank, the plant superintendent, was convicted of the crime and sentenced to death, although he always maintained his innocence. He appealed his case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, losing each time. Then Georgia Gov. John Slaton commuted his sentence to life imprisonment.
The decision so angered the general populace that a mob ...