A Little Girl is Dead

Until the 1960s, only once had a southern jury convicted a white man on a capital offense on the testimony of a Negro. The white man was Leo Frank, and he was convicted of the murder of fourteen-year-old Mary Phagan in 1913 not because the jury believed his Negro accuser, but because Frank was a Jew and a capitalist. In 1915, a mob seized Frank from prison and hanged him near the home where Mary was born. There is little doubt Frank was innocent, and his lynching shocked the civilized world. Golden has set out to illumine a crucial moment in the American past, a moment in which courage and mob rule, prejudice and humanity, compassion and frenzy clashed and contended – and courage, humanity, and compassion lost.