The lynching of the Frenches of Warsaw took place in Warsaw, Gallatin County, Kentucky on May 3, 1876, between 1am and 2am 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]
^ abWright, George C. 1990. Racial Violence in Kentucky, 1865–1940: Lynchings, Mob Rule, and "Legal Lynchings". pp. 98-99. Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press