According to sociologist James W. Loewen, Stone Mountain was ""the" sacred site to members of the second and third national klans." Loewen alleges that the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan–the second Klan—was inspired by D. W. Griffith's 1915 Klan-glorifying film, "The Birth of a Nation". It was followed in August by the highly publicized lynching of Leo Frank, who had been wrongly convicted of murder, in nearby Marietta, Georgia. Loewen further alleges that on November 25 of the same year, Thanksgiving Day, a small group, including fifteen robed and hooded "charter members" of the new organization, met at the summit of Stone Mountain to create a new iteration of the Klan. Led by William J. Simmons, it included two elderly members of the original Klan. As part of their ceremony, they set up on the summit an altar covered with a flag, opened a Bible, and burned a 16-foot cross.