MARIETTA – Rabbi Tom Liebschutz’s mournful chanting filled his Marietta synagogue on Monday afternoon as he led a memorial service for a Jewish man who long ago was lynched at a site just a few miles away.

Monday marked the 100th anniversary of Leo Frank’s lynching at the hands of an impassioned, armed mob who plucked the 29-year-old factory superintendent from a state prison farm, drove him more than 100 miles and hanged him.

“We have been pained by the void created by Leo Frank’s passing, yet love is as strong as death, the bonds created by love are eternal, and ours is the blessing of memory through which Leo Frank’s life continues to be with us,” Liebschutz said.

The service – held on the same day that an exhibit on Frank’s lynching opened at a museum in nearby Kennesaw – recognized what is widely considered a nasty chapter in Georgia’s history that hasn’t always been openly discussed.

The head of a pencil factory in newly industrialized Atlanta, Frank was convicted in 1913 of a young employee’s murder. The victim, 13-year-old Mary Phagan, was found brutally battered at the factory.

Frank’s conviction was controversial, and two years later, the governor commuted his death sentence to life in prison, sparking a group from Marietta, where Phagan lived, to pursue their own brand of justice.

Frank was being held at the state prison farm located on what is now the Georgia College campus in Milledgeville and was recovering from a knife attack by another prisoner. The door to the prison infirmary, which is said to have opened easily to the mob that day, and a couple of bricks from the prison are part of the exhibit at The Southern Museum.

Frank’s innocence is still debated, but it’s the vigilantism of local officials and the failure of others to protect Frank during the appeals process that has come into focus today.

Former Gov. Roy Barnes, a lifelong Cobb County resident, remembered Monday that Frank’s lynching was all “hush hush” when he was growing up.

The Jewish community – those who remained – didn’t speak of it. Nor did others in a community where descendants of the 28 men who orchestrated Frank’s lynching still live. Some are today’s local leaders.

Barnes knows all too well. His wife’s grandfather, who ran a cab company and was one of the few residents at the time with a car, was part of the mob, he said.

“How did the elite and educated of our community, how did they become monsters and drag a fellow out and kill him without the provision of law?” asked Barnes, who spoke at the remembrance held at Congregation Ner Tamid.

“I can’t answer that except to say it was passion and prejudice, and leadership failed,” he said.

Frank, who was from Brooklyn and Ivy League educated, saw his post at the pencil factory as a chance to further his career. To Southerners, he represented what was commonly referred to as the “second invasion” – the influx of northern businessmen in the decades following the Civil War.

When Phagan’s body was found in the basement of the factory, Georgians were quick to believe the word of a janitor named Jim Conley – whom many, Barnes included, now suspect was the actual killer – over Frank’s.

But for Barnes, Monday’s ceremony was more than a memorial for Frank. The event was a reminder to “never to let passion and prejudice and a bunch of weak-kneed politicians lead us into disaster again,” he said.

It could happen today in a heartbeat, Barnes said.

He compared inflammatory comments by presidential candidates about immigrants, referring to Republican front-runner Donald Trump, to Alabama Gov. Georgia Wallace’s comments about segregation. Wallace’s rhetoric, said Barnes, provoked the 1963 bombing of a Baptist church in Birmingham that killed four girls.

The advances that have been made often feel like “two steps forward and one step back,” said Barnes, a Democrat.

And that will likely continue, said Richard Banz, director of the Southern Museum of Civil War and Locomotive History, where the Frank exhibit is on display through November.

“There will be setbacks. There will be other Leo Franks,” said Banz. “But maybe every single day we can struggle for some justice and some dialogue.”

Jill Nolin covers the Georgia Statehouse for CNHI’s newspapers and websites. Reach her at jnolin@cnhi.com.