Lynching of Benjamin and Mollie French
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The lynching of the Frenches of Warsaw took place in Warsaw, Gallatin County, Kentucky on May 3, 1876, between 1 am and 2 am on a Wednesday morning. Benjamin and Mollie French, African Americans, were lynched by a white mob for the murder of another African American, which was unusual for this period.[1] Lake Jones was an elderly black man who had faithfully served a white family named Howard, both before and after his emancipation from slavery.[2] The Frenches were accused of poisoning Lake Jones with arsenic and intending to steal his money.[3][4][5][6]
The Ku Klux Klan lynched the Frenches because, they said, Lake Jones was "the best nigger in the country."[1][7][8] The KKK broke into the jail, took the Frenches about a mile upstream of Warsaw, and hanged them both from a tree on J.H. McDaniels' (McDonnell's in another account) farm.[2][7]