The Galveston hurricane was first discovered in August 1915 in the tropical Atlantic. This storm landed on Cuba and moved in a west-northwest direction. When the storm hit Texas, the storm surges were from eight to fifteen feet, and winds were at more than one hundred thirty-eight miles. Historically, this is the deadliest hurricane, causing more than eighteen hundred deaths.
Frazier, Dunbar. “Wrecked House Ruins on the East End.” University of Houston Libraries Digital Collections. Accessed November 21, 2023. https://digitalcollections.lib.uh.edu/concern/images/pz50gw19n?locale=en#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=0&xywh=-358%2C-1%2C4336%2C2148.
Lynching dates back to the 1830s in the United States. Lynching targeted groups of people, including Native Americans, Hispanics, African Americans, white individuals, etc. African Americans were mostly targets for lynchings because of false accusations and breaking social norms, for example, interracial relationships. Mobs decided to lynch people when they were taking “justice” into their own hands, and often law enforcement turned a blind eye to these heinous actions.
1. Why did Johnnie and Earl get into an argument?
2. How can society stay divided after their country faces a catastrophic natural disaster?
3. How does racism and religious intolerance correlate?
The following object description information includes basic elements from the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI). An additional notes field is included to list dates from the actual letter, envelope postmark locations, and any other identifying details.
Leo Frank, a Jewish-American businessman, was accused of murdering a thirteen-year-old girl, Mary Phagan, an employee at a pencil factory that he managed. When the night watch guard found her body, she was beaten badly, and it was rumored that she had been sexually assaulted, which enraged people, and they demanded swift results. Georgia's solicitor general, Hugh Dorsey, sought a grand jury indictment against Frank. Dorsey painted him as a sexual pervert who was both homosexual and preyed on little girls. People outside the courthouse were yelling “hang that Jew,” and one person on the jury said that if he gets picked, he will “make sure that Jew hangs.” After Frank’s appeals kept getting denied by the court, he sought out help from constitutional lawyer Louis Marshall of the American Jewish Committee. Marshall gave advice about what information to include in the appeal, but Frank’s Georgia attorneys ignored his counsel. After getting denied again, he sought help from Georgia Governor John M. Slaton. After Slanton reviewed the case, he determined that Frank was innocent and said he should be sent to life in prison, hoping that he would be released because he was innocent. However, two years later, on August 15, 1915, Frank was kidnapped from his cell by twenty-five men who were seeking justice for Mary Phagan. They lynched him from an oak tree, and thousands of people gathered to witness this. Two weeks later, Rabbi Stephen Wise reported that life as Southern Jews who were in little towns became extremely hard because they were being boycotted.
Image of murdered victim, thirteen-year-old victim Mary Phagan.
Feldberg, Michael. “Leo Frank.” The Jewish Virtual Library. Accessed November 21, 2023. https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/leo-frank.