Leo Frank

Leo Frank
Lucille and Leo Frank at Frank's trial
Born	April 17, 1884(1884-04-17) Cuero, Texas
Died	August 17, 1915(1915-08-17) (aged 31) Marietta, Georgia
Cause of death	Lynching
Resting place	New Mount Carmel Cemetery, Glendale, Queens, New York[1]
Residence	Atlanta, Georgia
Nationality	American
Ethnicity	Jewish
Education	Degree in mechanical engineering (1906)
Alma mater	Cornell University
Employer	National Pencil Company in Atlanta
Criminal charge	Convicted on August 26, 1913 of the murder of Mary Phagan
Spouse	Lucille Selig
Parents	Rudolf and Rachel Frank
Relatives	Marian Frank (sister)

Leo Max Frank (April 17, 1884 – August 17, 1915) was a Jewish-American businessman whose lynching in 1915 by a mob of prominent citizens in Marietta, Georgia, turned the spotlight on antisemitism in the United States and led to the founding of the Anti-Defamation League.^[2]

The manager of the National Pencil Company in Atlanta, and president of the local chapter of the Jewish community group, B'nai B'rith, Frank was convicted in August 1913 for the murder of one of the pencil factory workers, 13-year-old Mary Phagan. She was found dead in the factory on Sunday, April 27, 1913, with a cord round her neck that a pathologist said had been used to strangle her the day before. Saturday had been Confederate Memorial Day and Frank had been one of the few people in the factory; he had met Phagan there when she came in for her wages, which made him the last person known to have seen her alive, and there were stories that he had flirted with her in the past.^[3] His trial became the focus of powerful class and cultural interests; raised in New York, he was cast as a representative of Yankee capitalism, a rich northern Jew lording it over vulnerable working women, as one writer put it.^[4] Former U.S. Representative Thomas E. Watson used the case to push for a revival of the Ku Klux Klan, calling Frank a member of the Jewish aristocracy who had pursued "Our Little Girl" to a hideous death.^[5] Frank and his lawyers resorted to stereotypes too: Jim Conley, a suspect who testified against Frank, was a "filthy, lying nigger," they said, just the kind who would commit such a brutish crime.^[6]

There was jubilation in the streets when Frank was found guilty and sentenced to death, but Georgia's governor, John M. Slaton, believed there had been a miscarriage of justice, and after all Frank's legal appeals failed, he commuted the sentence to life imprisonment in June 1915—to great public outrage, in part because he was a partner in the law firm that had defended Frank. A crowd of 5,000 marched on Slaton's home, and two months later Frank was kidnapped from prison by a mob of 25 armed men—the "Knights of Mary Phagan"—who drove him 150 miles to Frey's Mill, near Phagan's home in Marietta, and hanged him.^[7] After the hanging one man repeatedly stamped on Frank's face, while others sold photographs of him as souvenirs, along with pieces of his nightshirt and bits of the rope used to hang him.^[2]

On March 11, 1986, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles granted Frank a pardon, citing the state's failure to protect him or prosecute his killers, though they stopped short of exonerating him. The names of those who took part in the lynching were not made public until January 1, 2000, when Stephen Goldfarb, a former history professor and now librarian in Atlanta, published a list on his website. The Washington Post writes that the list contains several prominent citizens—including a former governor, the son of a senator, a Methodist minister, a state legislator, and a former state Superior Court judge—their names matching those on Marietta's street signs, office buildings, shopping centers, and law offices today.^[8]

Background

Leo Frank

Leo Frank

Frank was born in Cuero, Texas to Rudolf and Rachel Frank, and the family moved to Brooklyn, New York in 1884, when he was three months old. A sister, Marian, was born there. Frank was educated at public schools and the Pratt Institute, where he played basketball and read a lot. After graduating he studied mechanical engineering at Cornell University, where he joined the debating team, and took up landscape photography as a hobby. He took a job after Cornell as an engineer for the B.T. Sturtevant Company in Hyde Park, Massachusetts, then returned to New York to work for the National Meter Company. In 1907 his uncle, Moses Frank, suggested that he come to work for the National Pencil Company in Atlanta, which Moses, himself a southerner, had just invested in. Frank agreed, and traveled to Germany to study pencil manufacturing at Eberhard Faber, and in 1908 moved to Atlanta.^[9]

Elaine Aphin writes that Georgia was still in many ways living in the past. Even though the Civil War had been over for 50 years, the memory of what was called the Recent Unpleasantness was kept alive though celebrations such as Confederate Memorial Day.^[9] Frank was introduced to Lucille Selig shortly after he arrived in Atlanta. She came from a prominent and wealthy Jewish family of industrialists who two generations earlier had founded the first synagogue in Atlanta,^[10] though she was very different from Frank, and laughed at the idea of speaking Yiddish. They were married on November 28, 1910, and in the spring of 1913 she became pregnant.^[11] Shortly before this Frank was elected president of the Atlanta chapter of the B'nai B'rith. The Jewish community in Atlanta was the largest in the South, and the Franks moved in a cultured and philanthropic milieu whose leisure pursuits included opera and bridge.^[12] But although Frank was happy, he was not popular. He was a Yankee and an industrialist; Aphin writes that although the Old South was not known for its antisemitism, his being a Jew was enough to add to the sense that he was different.^[11]

Mary Phagan

Mary Phagan

Mary Phagan (June 1, 1899 – April 26, 1913) was born four months after her father died, into a family that had farmed in Georgia for generations.^[13] Her paternal grandfather, W.J. Phagan, provided Phagan's mother and four siblings a home near his in Marietta,^[14] but Phagan's mother moved her family instead to East Point, where she opened a boarding house, and the children took jobs in the local mills.^[15] Phagan left school at the age of ten to work part-time in a textile mill, then was hired in 1911 by a paper manufacturer.^[16] In 1912 her mother remarried, and she and the children moved into the city. Phagan took a job with the National Pencil Company, where she ran a machine that inserted rubber erasers into pencils' metal bands.^[17] Aphin writes that wages were low for everyone—ten to fifteen cents an hour, one-third of the average wage in the North—and most of the production-line workers were teenagers, an issue that fuelled resentment against the factory owners, regularly attacked by The Atlanta Georgian.^[18]

At the factory, April 26

Phagan worked in the metal room on the second floor of the factory, down the hall from Leo Frank's office.^[19] On Saturday, April 26, celebrated locally as Confederate Memorial Day, she went to the factory to claim her pay. George Epps, 14, a fellow factory worker, neighbor, and friend, testified at the trial that he had ridden the streetcar with her that morning. She reportedly told him that Frank had flirted with her and scared her.^[20] According to Epps, he and Phagan agreed to meet mid-afternoon to watch the parade together.^[21] Governor Slaton, examining the trial transcripts in 1915, determined that Phagan had reached the pencil factory door just after noon, some time between 12.05 and 12.10.^[22] Late that same evening Epps went to the Phagan home, to find out why she had not met him as planned.^[23] Phagan's mother later told someone at the Pinkerton Detective Agency that she doubted her daughter had arranged to meet Epps as Phagan had told her mother she detested him; the mother also said she had never heard her daughter say anything about Frank flirting with her.^[24]

Epps at the trial said he rode the train with Mary, and that they got off several minutes after noon at Forsyth and Marietta Streets.^[25] According to Epps, he and Phagan had agreed to meet each other near Elkin-Watson's at 2pm to see the Memorial Day parade.^[26] After the trial he recanted his testimony, stating in a 3,500-word affidavit, that "at both the coroner's inquest and the trial of Leo Frank I swore falsely. I now state that I was persuaded to give the false testimony ... by Detective John Black."^[27] Epps later repudiated his recantation, claiming that he had been lured by Jimmie Wrenn and C.W. Burke (employed by the Leo Frank defense team), taken to Birmingham Alabama and forced by treat of violence^[28] to recant his testimony. Epps was in police custody in the state reformatory where he was serving a sentence for theft when he made this last statement.^[29] C.W. Burke in an affidavit denied that Epps had been forced to go to Alabama. He claimed, "Epps told us he was afraid of John Black and wouldn't make a statement in Atlanta."^[30]

The week before, a shortage of metal for Mary's machine had led to a reduction in her hours.^[31] Her wages, usually about $6.00 per week, were only $1.20 for the week^[32] and Leo Frank stated her pay envelope was inscribed with employee number #186 and initials M. P. (Mary Phagan), that it contained two silver half-dollars and two silver dimes.^[33] Mary worked typically 55 hours a week and was paid about 12 cents an hour.^[34] Leo Frank earned $150 per month ^[35] and shared in the factory's profits.^[36] Phagan's pay was issued to her by Frank. According to Frank, Mary asked him if the metal had come in yet; he said no,^[37] and she left the office.^[38] Detective Scott, the Superintendent of the Pinkerton Detective Agency, hired by pencil factory and representing the defense, at the trial testified that Frank told him that when Mary had asked, "if the metal came in yet?", that Leo Frank said he told her, "I don't know".^[39] The prosecution used this statement as a pretext in their case against Frank, that he lured Phagan into the Metal Room, where he strangled her.^[40] Leo Frank was the last person to admit seeing Mary Phagan alive.

Body found, April 27

At 3:00 a.m. on April 27, the police received a call from the factory's night watchman, Newt Lee, reporting the discovery of a dead girl. When the police arrived at the factory, they found Phagan's mangled body in a dark, dirty basement next to a furnace. Phagan had been strangled with a 2-cm (3/4-inch) cord. Examining doctors' observations conflicted as to whether evidence indicated sexual assault.^[41] Some evidence at the crime scene was improperly handled by the police investigators. There were bloody fingerprints on the back door of the basement. The boards were removed and subsequently lost before any analysis could be done. No report was ever issued on other bloody fingerprints on the victim's jacket.^[42] A trail in the dirt along which police believed Phagan had been dragged was trampled and no footprints were ever identified.^[43]

Murder investigation

One of the murder notes

At first, Frank said that Newt Lee's time card was complete. It was supposed to be punched every half hour during the watchman's rounds. However, Frank later said Newt Lee had not punched the card at three consecutive intervals, throwing new suspicion on Newt Lee as the lapse in time created unaccounted time. Frank said the time intermission would have given Newt Lee an hour to have gone to his house and back.^[44] The police investigated a variety of suspects, and arrested both Newt Lee and two friends of Phagan's for the crime. Gradually they became convinced that they were not the culprits. A detective sneaked into Newt Lee's apartment and found a blood-soaked shirt at the bottom of a clothes barrel. The prosecution later claimed that the shirt had been planted by a Frank crony in order to incriminate Lee. Suspicion did not fall on Frank immediately. Newt Lee spent eight minutes trying to call Leo Frank just before 4 A.M. after he had called the police around 3:25 AM. The police arrived at the factory just after 4 A.M. The police called Franks house between 5 and 6 A.M. and Frank answered, the police asked him to accompany them to the factory.^[45] When the police arrived after 7 A.M. without telling the specifics of what happened at the factory, Frank seemed extremely nervous, trembling, pale and was rubbing his hands. When the police asked Leo Frank if he knew Mary Phagan, Frank replied,

"Does she work at the factory? I can not tell whether she works there or not, until I look at my payroll book. I know very few of the girls that work there. I pay them off, but I very seldom go back in the factory and I know very few of them, but I can look on my payroll book and tell you if a girl by the name of Mary Phagan works there." ^[46][47]

The detectives took Leo Frank to the morgue to view the body of Mary Phagan. The mortician Mr. Gheesling turned the face of Phagan toward Leo Frank and the detectives. Mr. Frank moments later stepped aside into Mr. Gheesling's sleeping room^[48] and was shortly asked if he knew the girl, and he replied again that he didn't know whether he did or not, but that he could tell by looking at his payroll book.^[49]

Both of Frank's references to not knowing Mary Phagan were to take on greater significance, because it would come out during the investigation and then affirmed again at the murder trial, Phagan had worked down the hall from Frank's 2nd floor office for nearly a year, having drawn more than 50 pay envelopes from Frank and that Frank would have to pass immediately by Phagan's work station to get to the bathroom.^[50] Several employees testified at the trial that Leo Frank spoke with Mary on a first name basis and would pass through the metal room each day where Phagan worked and looking around.^[51][52]

Frank pointed out at the trial that the police had refused to tell him the nature of their investigation when they arrived at his house in the morning and made him accompany them to the factory, which was why he was so nervous. The Atlanta Constitution broke the story. Soon after there was a frenzied competition for readers between the Constitution and the Georgian, a formerly sedate local paper that had recently been bought by the Hearst syndicate and revamped to compete using the standard Hearst formula of yellow journalism. As many as 40 extra editions came out the day Phagan's murder was reported. The Georgian published a doctored morgue photo of Phagan, in which her head was shown spliced onto the body of another girl.^[53]

Some evidence went missing when it was 'borrowed' from the police by certain reporters. The two papers offered a total of $1,800 in reward money for information leading to the apprehension of the murderer. The high reward offer elicited excessive leads that the police found to be false or irrelevant.

Two notes were found in the basement next to Mary Phagan's body, supposedly written by Phagan as she was being raped and dying, accusing a tall dark skinned Negro, like the "night witch,"^[54] of killing her. These came to be known as the "murder notes" and resulted in the night watchman becoming the prime suspect immediately in the beginning of the investigation.

Suspicion falls on Frank

An Atlanta Georgian headline on April 29, 1913, showing that the police suspected Frank and Newt Lee.

Frank hired the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, considered the best in the industry, before he was arrested, to protect the National Pencil Company and to "work with and assist the city detectives in ferreting out the crime."^[55] Some observers interpreted this negatively, as the Pinkerton agency had a reputation as the violent enforcers for American industrialists. Frank later produced alibis for the entire time during which the crime could have been committed; however, suspicion was aroused by the fact that he waited over a week — saying that he had forgotten — to bring forward one crucial witness, Lemmie Quinn.

Gradually the Georgian began to take Frank's side, responding to outrage from Atlanta's Jewish community.^[56] The Constitution continued to criticize the police for their slow progress.

Jim Conley

Conley's statements to the police

Jim Conley, the factory's janitor, is the person most often mentioned as a suspect after Frank.^[57]

On May 1, Jim Conley, the pencil factory's janitor, was arrested after he was caught by the plant's day watchman, E.F. Holloway, washing a dirty blue workshirt. Conley tried to hide the shirt, then said the stains were rust from the overhead pipe on which he had hung it. Detectives examined it for blood, found none and returned it.^[58] Conley was still in police custody two weeks later when he gave his first formal statement. He said that, on the day of the murder, he had been visiting saloons, shooting dice, and drinking at home. He offered some details, such as 40 cents spent on a bootle of rye, 90 cents won at dice, and 15 cents for beer, twice.^[59] His story was called into question when a witness told detectives that "a black negro... dressed in dark blue clothing and hat" had been seen in the lobby of the factory on the day of the murder. Further investigation also determined that Conley could read and write, something he had initially denied.^[60]

After initially sticking to his claim that he couldn't write, he was threatened with perjury charges, and eventually told police, "White folks, I'm a liar." He was asked to write portions of the murder notes, and although the police found similarities in the spelling, he continued to deny having written them. The interview ended and Conley was placed in a basement isolation cell.^[61] A week later, on May 24, he called for a detective and admitted he had written the notes. In a sworn statement he said Frank had called him to his office the day before the murder, and had apparently said: "Why should I hang? I have some wealthy people in Brooklyn."^[62]

[H]e asked me could I write and I told him yes I could write a little bit, and he gave me a scratch pad and ... told me to put on there "dear mother, a long, tall, black negro did this by himself," and he told me to write it two or three times on there. I wrote it on a white scratch pad, single ruled. He went to his desk and pulled out another scratch pad, a brownish looking scratch pad, and looked at my writing and wrote on that himself.^[63]

After testing Conley again on his spelling—he spelled "night watchman" as "night witch"—the police were convinced he had written the notes, but they were skeptical about the rest of his story, because it not only implied premeditation on the part of Frank, but also that Frank would have confessed this to Conley and involved him. For the next three days, two detectives played good cop/bad cop with Conley, one accusing him of the murder, the other offering him food and consolation.^[64]

On May 28 Conley was confronted by both E. F. Holloway and a Georgian newspaper headline that said suspicion in the case had turned to Conley. The article said that Holloway believed Colney had strangled Phagan when he was drunk.^[65] As a result, in a new affidavit (his second affidavit and third statement) Conley admitted that he had lied about his Friday meeting with Frank. He now said that he had met Frank on the street on Saturday, and was told to follow him to the factory. Frank told him to hide in a wardrobe to avoid being seen by two women who were visiting Frank in his office. He said Frank then dictated the murder notes for him to write, gave him cigarettes, and told him to leave the factory. Afterward, Conley said he went out drinking and saw a movie. He said he did not learn of the murder until he went to work on Monday.^[66] The police were satisfied with the new story and both the Journal and the Georgian gave the story front-page coverage. Three officials of the pencil company were not convinced and said so to the Journal. They contended that Conley had followed another employee into the building intending to rob her, but instead found that Phagan was a more ready target.^[67] The police placed little credence in the employees' theory, but had no explanation for the failure to locate the purse, and were concerned that Conley had made no mention that he was aware that a crime had been committed when he wrote the notes. To resolve their doubts, the police attempted on May 28 to arrange a confrontation between Frank and Conley. Frank exercised his right not to meet without his attorney, who was out of town. The police announced that this refusal was an indication of Frank's guilt, and the meeting never took place.^[68]

On May 29 Conley was subjected four hours to a ruthless grilling.^[69] His new affidavit said that Frank told him that "he had picked up a girl back there and let her fall and that her head hit against something." Conley said that he and Frank took the body to the basement via the elevator, then returned to Frank's office where the murder notes were dictated. Conley then hid in the wardrobe after the two had returned to the office. Frank then supposedly gave Conley two hundred dollars, but took it back, saying “Let me have that and I will make it all right with you Monday if I live and nothing happens." Colney's affidavit concluded, "The reason I have not told this before is I thought Mr. Frank would get out and help me out and I decided to tell the whole truth about this matter."^[70] At trial, Conley changed his story concerning the $200. He said the money was withheld until Conley had burned Phagan's body in the basement furnace.^[71]

William Smith

William Smith represented Conley, but after the trial declared him guilty.^[72]

The Georgian hired William Smith to be Conley's lawyer and offered to pay his fees. Smith was known for specializing in representing black clients, and had successfully defended a black man against an accusation of rape by a white woman. He had also taken an elderly black woman's civil case as far as the Georgia Supreme Court. Although Smith believed Conley had told the truth in his final affidavit, he became concerned that Conley was giving long jailhouse interviews with crowds of reporters. Smith was concerned about reporters from the Hearst papers, who had taken Frank's side. He arranged for Conley to be moved to a different jail, and severed his own relationship with the Georgian.^[73]

Other witnesses

Two witnesses came forward to incriminate Conley. Will Green, a carnival worker, said he had been playing craps at the factory with Conley, and had run away from him when Conley had declared his intention to rob a girl who walked by. William Mincey, an insurance salesman, said he had met an intoxicated Conley on the street, and that Conley told him, "I have killed one today and do not wish to kill another," but Mincey thought it was a joke. Neither man signed an affidavit or testified in court.^[74]

April 26 timeline

Time of death (11:00 am through 1:20 pm)

The prosecution realized early on that issues relating to time would be an essential part of its case.^[75] At trial, both sides would present witnesses to support their version of the timeline for the hours before and after the murder. The starting point was the time of death and by the time of the trial the prosecution, relying on the analysis of stomach contents by its expert witness, argued that Phagan died between 12:00 and 12:15 pm. Monteen Stover, who had come into the office to get her paycheck, said that she had looked for Frank in his office between 12:00 and 12:10 pm and had not found him. This would seem to contradict Frank's initial statement to police that he had not left the office between noon and 12:30.^[76]

Testimony at trial indicated that Phagan exited the trolley between 12:07 and 12:10. From the stop it was a two to four minute walk. Conley had said that Phagan arrived before Stover, indicating either Conley or Stover was wrong.^[77] Lemmie Quinn, a plant foreman, testified that he saw Frank at his desk at 12:20. Frank had said at the coroner's inquest that Quinn arrived less than ten minutes after Phagan had left his office.^[78]

Conley said that the ladies he had hidden from in the wardrobe were Emma Clark and Corinthia Hall. In his third affidavit this occurred after Phagan's body had been moved to the basement. At trial, both Clark and Hall testified that they had been in the office between 11:35 and 11:45 am, contradicting one of the most vivid parts of Conley's testimony.^[79]

According to Conley and others, it would have taken at least thirty minutes to murder Phagan, take the body to the basement, return to the office, and write the murder notes. By the defense's calculations, Frank's time was fully accounted for from 11:30 am to 1:30 pm with the exception of eighteen minutes between 12:02 and 12:20.^[80] Hattie Hall, a stenographer, stated at trial that Frank had specifically requested that she come in that Saturday and that Frank had been working in his office from 11:00 to nearly noon. As noted above, Quinn placed Frank in his office at 12:20.^[81]

Frank said he had left the factory for lunch by 1:10. Helen Kerns reported seeing Frank, who she recognized from a job interview, at 1:10 waiting for the trolley to take him home. A neighbor, Mrs. Albert Levy stated that she saw him exiting the trolley at 1:20.^[82] Franks in-laws also placed him arriving home at 1:20. Conley however, in his third affidavit, had Frank dictating the murder notes to him at 1:00. All of this presented a problem for the prosecution since Frank could not have finished the notes, go upstairs and check on two workers, Arthur White and Harry Denham, escort Mrs. White out of the building, take a ten minute trolley ride, and still arrive home at 1:20.^[83]

Minola McKnight (1:20 pm through 2:00 pm)

A few days after Conley gave his third afidavit, Minola McKnight, age 20, the African-American cook for Lucille Frank's parents who shared their home with their daughter and son-in-law, was brought in for questioning. At first she corroborated Frank's story concerning the times he arrived home for lunch and returned to the factory. She was agitated, believing her husband, who she had recently had a serious falling out with, was telling lies to the police to get back at her. After several hours of interrogation in which she consistently upheld Frank's version of events, she was placed under arrest. Throughout the night she kept saying through the cell window that both she and Frank were innocent.^[84]

After spending the night in jail and after several hours of intense questioning, McKnight signed a statement that still affirmed the 1:20 arrival for lunch, but now stated that rather than spending a half hour at home Frank left very quickly. The implication was that Frank needed to return to the factory to continue his work with Conley. She also added details concerning events in the home later that night. She said she overheard Frank's wife say he made her sleep on the rug and Frank kept asking for his pistol so he could shoot himself. She said that Frank had told her, "It is mighty bad, Minola. I might have to go to jail about this girl, and I don't know anything about it." Finally she implied that she had been bribed by her employer, Mrs. Selig, "as a tip for me to keep quiet."^[85]

The same day she was released by the police, McKnight denied that she had legal representation^[86] as reported and said of the statement, "It's most all a pack of lies". At trial she declared that the entire statement had been false: "I signed it to get out of jail, because they said they would not let me out." On cross-examination she said, "The statement that I signed is not the truth."^[87] Mrs. Selig denied under oath ever having raised McKnight's wages.^[88]

Return to office (2:00 pm through 7:00 pm)

Frank's attorneys were able to locate witnesses to dipute the alleged early departure from lunch. A neighbor of Frank's, Hennie Wolfsheimer, a relative of Mrs. Frank, and Mrs. M. G. Michael all confirmed that they saw Frank get on the trolley at 2:00. Rebecca Carson, a former employee of the pencil factory testified that she saw Frank near Rich's Department Store at 2:25 and at Jacob's Pharmacy around 2:35.^[89]

At 3:00 Frank said he returned to the office. The two workers White and Denham, who Frank had left at the locked up factory, were still there. The timecards indicated that they checked out at 3:15. Frank recollected that White stopped in his office before he left and received an advance on his pay.^[90] Newt Lee, the night watchman, arrived at work at 4:00. Frank told Lee that he had not yet finished his own work and asked Lee to return at 6:00.^[91]

When Lee returned at 6:00, James Gantt also arrived. Lee told police that Gantt, a former employee that had been fired by Frank after $2 was found missing from the cash box, wanted to look for two pairs of shoes he had left at the factory. Frank allowed Gantt in, although Lee indicated Frank appeared to be upset by Gantt's appearance.^[92] Frank arrived home at 6:25 and at 7:00 he called Lee to determine if everything had gone all right with Gantt.^[93]

Local newspaper coverage

When local newspapers discovered the Mary Phagan case, their sensational headlines and news stories instantly captured the public's attention — filling their own coffers in the process. In many of their early articles the papers openly assumed that Frank was guilty. During the murder investigation, papers published every new detail of hearsay, gossip, conflicting rumors and shifting conspiracy theories, thus ensuring continued interest — and continued circulation — during the trial, outcome and appeal stages of the case. Historian Albert Lindemann writes:

In astonishingly irresponsible competition with one another for sensational details, they simply fabricated stories or resorted to the most lurid, absurd speculations. If the argument that opinion in certain segments of Atlanta's population rapidly hardened into something like religious faith has merit, then there is little question that these early sensationalistic releases by Atlanta's newspapers were essential to the process.^[94]

The three major Atlanta newspapers: The Atlanta Journal, The Atlanta Constitution and The Atlanta Georgian published detailed accounts of the trial's daily testimony in 1913. Today these newspaper accounts, as well as the brief of evidence from the 1913 trial (which still exists on microfilm), comprise the most thorough records that remain of the proceedings. The official seven large volumes stenographed on legal cap paper, comprising over 3,500 pages^[95] of the Leo Frank trial transcript disappeared from the courthouse archive room during the 1960s.^[96][97] A significantly abridged, annotated version of the transcript was published in 1918 called American State Trials volume X by John D. Lawson^[98] and a complete version of the testimony ratified by both the Leo Frank defense and prosecution teams exists titled, 'Leo M. Frank, Plaintiff in Error, vs. State of Georgia, Defendant in Error. In Error from Fulton Superior Court at the July Term 1913. Brief of Evidence' at the Georgia State Archives.^[99]

Conviction of Frank

Grand jury indictment

The first day of the trial in the racially segregated courtroom. The stenographer squats next to Newt Lee, who is being questioned by prosecutor Hugh Dorsey.

The grand jury convened on May 23, 1913. The prosecutor, Hugh Dorsey, had decided to present only enough information to obtain an indictment. He provided witnesses that suggested that the murder occurred on the second floor of the building, that Frank was anxious on both the day of the murder and the day of his arrest, and that Mary Phagan had been raped. The rape determination was not made by the medical examiner, J. W. Hurt (who would testify at the later trial that he could not determine if a rape had occurred), but by two non-experts, a police officer and the undertaker.^[100]

No physical evidence was presented or discussed. The murder notes were not mentioned. Dorsey assured the jury that additional information would be provided during the trial and the next day, after five minutes of deliberation, the jury voted for an indictment.^[101] The grand jury consisted of twenty three sworn jurors ^[102] which included at least four ^[103][104] or five Jews.^[105][106] Two Grand Jurors where not present on the day of the vote, George Gershon, a Jew and M. Beutell, a Gentile.^[107] The indictment read:

In the name and behalf of the citizens of Georgia, charge and accuse Leo M. Frank, of the County and State aforesaid, with the offense of Murder, for that the said Leo M. Frank in the County aforesaid on the 26th day of April in the year of our Lord Nineteen Hundred and thirteen, with force and arms did unlawfully and with malice aforethought kill and murder one Mary Phagan by then and there choking her, the said Mary Phagan, with a cord place around her neck contrary to the laws of said State, the good order, peace and dignity thereof.^[108]

Author Lindemann suggests, "[T]hey were persuaded by the concrete evidence that [prosecutor] Dorsey presented."^[109] Lindemann notes that none of Conley's testimony was presented to the grand jury and that at criminal trial, Dorsey "explicitly denounced racial anti-Semitism" and "indulged in ... philo-Semitic rhetoric."^[109] However author Steve Oney, after Dorsey referred to a number of historical figures, most of them Jews, who had committed crimes, noted, "That Dorsey ... was attempting to stir anti-Semitic sentiments there can be no doubt."^[110]

Trial

Prosecutor Hugh Dorsey.

Lead defense lawyer Luther Rosser.

Frank's trial began on July 28, 1913.^[111] Because of the heat, the windows were left open. In addition to the spectators inside, a large crowd gathered outside the ground-floor courtroom in the city hall to watch the trial through the windows, a circumstance that became important as a factor in the defense's claims of witness and jury intimidation.^[112]

The judge was Leonard S. Roan, who had been serving as a judge in Georgia since 1900.^[113] The prosecution team was led by Hugh M. Dorsey, Solicitor General, Frank A. Hooper, and E. A. Stephens, Assistant Solicitor.^[114] Frank was represented by a team of eight lawyers, including jury selection specialists, led by Luther Rosser, Reuben Arnold and Herbert Haas.^[114] The defense used peremptory challenges to eliminate the only two black jurors among the pool. After peremptory challenges, the defense and prosecution agreed to a jury of twelve white men.

The prosecution's theory was that Conley's affidavit explaining the immediate aftermath of the murder was true, that Frank was the murderer, and that Frank had dictated the murder notes in an effort to pin the crime on Newt Lee, the night watchman. The defense argued that Conley was the murderer, and that Newt Lee, the night watchman, helped Conley write the two murder notes. The defense brought numerous witnesses who attested to Frank's alibi, which did not leave him enough time to have committed the crime.

A number of employees, including female factory workers, testified that they had never seen Frank flirting or touching the girls and that they considered him to be of good character.^[115] In their rebuttal case, the prosecution produced witnesses who testified that Frank had a "bad" reputation for lasciviousness.^[116] Defense witnesses testified that on that particular day, a Confederate holiday and a Saturday, there were too many people in the factory for Frank to have had trysts there. They also pointed out that the windows of Frank's second floor office lacked curtains.

Conley reiterated his testimony from his affidavit. He added to it by describing Frank as regularly having sex with women in his upstairs second floor office on Saturdays while Conley kept a lookout on the first floor. Although Conley admitted that he had changed his story and at first lied repeatedly to cover for Frank, this did not much damage the prosecution's case. Conley admitted to having been an accessory, so observers did not think it surprising that he had lied. Many white observers assumed that a black man could not have been intelligent enough to make up such an elaborate and complicated story. The Georgian wrote, "Many people are arguing to themselves that the negro (Jim Conley), no matter how hard he tried or how generously he was coached, still never could have framed up a story like the one he told unless there was some foundation in fact."

Frank's testimony

Frank spoke on his own behalf by making an unsworn statement as allowed by Georgia Code, Section 1036; it did not permit any cross-examination without his consent, and no cross-examination occurred. He began by describing his preparation of the payroll records on Friday, April 25. In rebuttal of a claim that another employee had attempted to collect Mary Phagan's check that day, Frank stated that "No one came into my office who asked me for a pay envelope or for the pay of another.^[117] Frank then went on, spending hours, describing in boring and mind numbing details^[118] the minutia of his accounting activities on Saturday, the day of the murder. Author Steve Oney writes:

Frank's presentation, dispassionate and cool, was the antithesis of Jim Conley's testimony. But rather than continue in this same formal yet accessible manner, the superintendent plunged into the fine points of the dozen or so invoices. Evidently he believed he needed to establish that the work was so involved that it had required him, just as several witnesses had sworn, to defer the all-important financial sheet until the afternoon. Yet from the start there was something unnerving about the resulting assembly line of details.^[119]

When a brief recess was called after Frank "had been ratcheting on for the better part of two and a half hours", Oney concluded that he "may have convinced" some listeners on the time issue, but it was more likely that the audience reacted with "suspicion and disbelief. If the testimony had ended at this point Oney believes "it would have been judged an unmitigated disaster."^[120]

He ended with a description of how he viewed the crime, including an effective, and by some accounts moving, explanation of the nervousness testified to by the police:

Gentlemen, I was nervous. I was completely unstrung. Imagine yourself called from sound slumber in the early hours of the morning, whisked throughthe chill morning air without breakfast, to go into that undertaking establishment and have the light suddenly flashed on a scene like that. To see that little girl on the dawn of womanhood so cruelly murdered — it was a scene that would have melted stone. Is it any wonder I was nervous.^[121]

Concerning the testimony by Dalton about Leo Frank and him using Franks second floor office to meet up with prostitutes as corroborated by Jim Conley, Frank said:

...If Dalton was ever in the factory building with any woman, I didn't know it. I never saw Dalton in my life to know him until this crime.^[122]

Regarding rumors about the reason why his wife had not visited him in his first days in jail, Frank proclaimed:

The date I was taken into custody, my wife was there. But I thought I would save her the humiliation of seeing me in those surroundings. I expected to be turned loose and returned once more to her side at home. Gentlemen, we had to restrain her. She was willing to be locked up with me.^[123]

Concerning the murder of Mary Phagan and the whereabouts and testimony of Jim Conley, Leo Frank stated:

Gentleman, I know nothing whatsoever of the death of little Mary Phagan. I had no part in causing her death, nor do I know how she came to her death after she took her money and left my office. I never even saw Jim Conley in the factory or anywhere else on April 26th 1913. The statement of the negro Conley is a tissue of lies from first to last. ... Conley's statement as to his coming and going up and helping me dispose of the body, or that I had anything to do with her or to do with him that day is a monstrous lie. ... The story as to women coming into the factory with me for immoral purposes is a base lie and the few occasions that he claims to have seen me in indecent positions with women is a lie so vile that I have no language with which to fitly denounce it. ... Gentlemen, some newspaper men have called me "the silent man in the tower," and I have kept my silence and my counsel advisedly, until the proper time and place. The time is now; the place is here; and I have told you the truth, the whole truth.^{[124][125][126]}

Oney states that the final testimony, coming as it did after the earlier "tedious tabulations and rote recitations" "moved nearly all who had heard it. A reporter for the Georgian wrote that "Frank was far and away the very best witness the defense has put forward,"and the Constitution said that his testimony "carried the ring of truth in every sentence."^[127]

Closing and verdict

In closing statements, the defense used racial stereotypes and bias to attempt to divert suspicion from Frank to Conley. Lead defense attorney Luther Rosser said to the jury: "Who is Conley? He is a dirty, filthy, black, drunken, lying, nigger."^[128] Frank had issued a widely publicized statement questioning how the "perjured vaporizings of a black brute" could be accepted in testimony against him.^[128] The prosecutor Hugh Dorsey compared Frank to the fictional character(s) of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He said that Frank had killed Phagan to keep her from talking. During the trial, the prosecution alleged bribery and witness tampering attempts by the Frank legal team.^[129][130]

The defense requested a mistrial because it believed the jurors had been intimidated by the people inside and outside the courtroom, but the motion was denied.^[131] Fearing for the safety of Frank and his lawyers in case of an acquittal, Roan and the defense agreed that neither Frank nor his defense attorneys would be present when the verdict was read.^[132] On August 25, 1913, after less than four hours of deliberation, the jury reached a unanimous guilty verdict.^[133] There was pandemonium outside.^[134] The Constitution described the scene as Dorsey emerged from the steps of City Hall: "The solicitor reached no farther than the sidewalk. While mounted men rode like Cossacks through the human swarm, three muscular men slung Mr. Dorsey on their shoulders and passed him over the heads of the crowd across the street."^[135]

Appeals

Tom Watson, publisher of Watson's Magazine and The Jeffersonian, whipped up public opinion against Frank.

On August 26, the day after the decision of guilty was reached by the jury, Judge Roan brought counsel into private chambers and sentenced Leo Frank to death by hanging with the date set to Oct 10th. The defense team issued a public protest, published August 26 in the Atlanta newspapers, the theme of which they were to carry through all the appeals:

The temper of the public mind was such that it invaded the court room and invaded the streets and made itself manifest at every turn the jury made; and it was just as impossible for this jury to escape the effects of this public feeling as if they had been turned loose and had been permitted to mingle with the people. In doing this we are making no criticism of the jury. They were only men and unconsciously this prejudice rendered any other verdict impossible.^[136]

On the same day the defense filed a motion for a new trial which over time was amended to include over 100 grounds of error. On October 31 Judge Roan denied the motion, but added, "Gentlemen, I have thought about this case more than any other I have ever tried...I am not certain of this man's guilt.... But I do not have to be convinced. The jury was convinced."^[137]

The cause of seeking a new trial was taken to the Supreme Court of Georgia on a writ of error.^[138] Among other arguments the defense cited Judge Roan's remarks as proof that "the judge had put forward the discretion of the jury as an excuse for not exercising his own."^[139] On February 17, 1914, a judgment was rendered rejecting the arguments and affirming the judgment of conviction by the Superior Court of Fulton County by 4 to 2, and on February 25 unanimously denying the motion for a rehearing.^[140] Leo Frank had exhausted all his options to motion for a new trial; he was re-sentenced to hang April 17, 1914,^[141] his birthday.

There followed several more appeals between April 1914 and May 1915.^[142][143] Frank's appeals to the Georgia Supreme Court failed in November. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Joseph R. Lamar denied a writ of habeas corpus sought by Frank's lawyers. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes also denied habeas corpus, although he wrote a short opinion stating that "I very seriously doubt if the petitioner ... has had due process of law ... because of the trial taking place in the presence of a hostile demonstration and seemingly dangerous crowd, thought by the presiding Judge to be ready for violence unless a verdict of guilty was rendered."

On December 28, Justice Lamar granted a writ of error allowing Frank to appeal to the full U.S. Supreme Court, which heard Frank's appeal in April 1915. On April 19, in the case of Frank v. Mangum, Frank's appeal was denied on a 7-2 vote. Holmes and Justice Charles Evans Hughes dissented, with Holmes writing that "Mob law does not become due process of law by securing the assent of a terrorized jury."^[144]

Clemency

Indignation in the press about the commutation of Frank's sentence.

On May 31, 1915, Frank pleaded to the Georgia State Prison Commission that his sentence be commuted to life imprisonment. On June 9 the Commission submitted a divided report to the departing Governor of Georgia, John M. Slaton.^[145]

Slaton heard arguments on both sides of the clemency issue from attorneys who had tried the case. He introduced a letter from Judge Roan, who had died in March, which became an object of contention at the hearing.^[146] He reviewed more than 10,000 pages of documents, visited the pencil factory (which the jury did not do), and examined new evidence that tended to incriminate Conley, including studies comparing Conley's speech patterns to the language of the murder notes.^[147][148] He noted later to reporters that "some of the most powerful evidence in [Frank's] behalf was not presented the jury which found him guilty."^[149] During the hearing former Governor Brown had warned Slaton, "In all frankness, if Your Excellency wishes to invoke lynch law in Georgia and destroy trial by jury, the way to do it is by retrying this case and reversing all the courts."^[148]

On June 21, 1915, Slaton commuted Frank's sentence to life in prison, "assuming that Frank's innocence would eventually be fully established and he would be set free."^[147] "I can endure misconstruction, abuse and condemnation," Slaton said, "but I cannot stand the constant companionship of an accusing conscience which would remind me that I, as governor of Georgia, failed to do what I thought to be right.... [F]eeling as I do about this case I would be a murderer if I allowed this man to hang. It may mean that I must live in obscurity the rest of my days, but I would rather be plowing in a field for the rest of my life than to feel that I had that blood on my hands."^[150]

However, in his written decision, Slaton said of the U.S. Supreme Court opinion that there was "no error of law" in Frank's trial and that "there was sufficient evidence to sustain the [guilty] verdict."^[151] On this latter point, he said the Court had ruled "correctly in my judgement."^[151] Furthermore, Slaton explicitly stated he was "sustaining the jury, the judge, and the appellate tribunals."^[151] His reason for commuting Frank's sentence to life imprisonment was that the Frank verdict fell in that "territory 'beyond a REASONABLE DOUBT and absolute certainty,' for which the law provides in allowing life imprisonment instead of execution."^[151] On the matter of bias against Frank as a Jew, Slaton wrote, "The charge against the State of Georgia of racial prejudice is unfair."^[151]

The commutation was issued June 21, six days before the new governor was to take office and one day before Leo Frank was scheduled to hang. According to Steve Oney, "I think Slaton made a decision of conscience... That said, there was a clear and troubling appearance of a conflict of interest." During the Frank trial Slaton was made a partner in the law firm headed by Rosser, Frank's lead defense counsel.^[152][153] Tom Watson railed against the decision and urged the lynchings of both Frank and Slaton.^[154] Slaton had been a popular governor throughout his term, but he and his wife left Georgia immediately.^[149]

Frank had been taken to the Milledgeville State Penitentiary the day before.^[155] A mob threatened to attack the governor at home. A detachment of the Georgia National Guard under the command of Major Asa Warren Candler, along with county policemen and a group of Slaton's friends who were sworn in as deputies, dispersed the mob.^[156][157]

At the Milledgeville prison a fellow inmate attempted to kill Frank, slashing his throat and nearly severing his jugular vein.^[155] The attacker told the authorities he wanted to keep the other inmates safe from mob violence, that Frank's presence was a disgrace to the prison, and that he was sure he would be pardoned if he killed Frank.^[158] On August 4 Frank wrote his wife, “I hope you did not yesterday or today hear the rumor I heard—viz: that I was dead. I want to firmly and decisively deny that rumor. I am alive by a big majority.”^[159] But the summer heat was keeping his wound from healing well.^[160][161]

Lynching

Joseph Mackey Brown (1851–1932), one of the ringleaders. He served two terms as the Governor of Georgia, 1909–1911, and 1912–1913.

The commutation drove Tom Watson to new heights of ferocity.^[162] In the pages of The Jeffersonian and Watson's Magazine, he reminded his readers that in a democracy, lynching parties were a tool of justice. "Hereafter, let no man reproach the South with lynch law: let him remember the unendurable provocation; and let him say whether lynch law is not better than 'no law at all....' [W]hen mobs are no longer possible liberty will be dead."^[163] "This country has nothing to fear from its rural communities. Lynch law is a good sign; it shows that a sense of justice lives among the people."^[164] On June 25, a marble slab six feet long was laid over Mary Phagan's grave in Marietta. On it was carved an inscription, written by Tom Watson, which began, "In this day of fading ideals and disappearing land marks, little Mary Phagan's heroism is an heirloom than which there is nothing more precious among the old red hills of Georgia."^[165]

"Knights of Mary Phagan"

The Knights of Mary Phagan began openly organizing a plan to kidnap Frank from the state prison farm at Milledgeville and take him to Marietta for lynching.^[166] The organizers recruited between 25 and 28 men with the necessary skills. An electrician was to cut the prison wires, car mechanics were to keep the cars running, and there was also a locksmith, a telephone man, a medic, a hangman, and a lay preacher.^[167] The ringleaders were named as:^[168]

• Joseph Mackey Brown, former governor of Georgia
• Emmet Burton, police officer
• Eugene Herbert Clay, former mayor of Marietta, son of Senator Alexander S. Clay
• E.P. Dobbs, mayor of Marietta at the time
• William J. Frey, former Cobb County sheriff
• George Hicks, Cobb County deputy sheriff
• William McKinney, Cobb County deputy sheriff
• Newton Augustus Morris, twice a superior court judge of the Blue Ridge Circuit
• Newton Mayes Morris, in charge of the Cobb County chain gang
• Fred Morris, general assemblyman who later organized Mariettas's first Boy Scout troop
• George Swanson, Cobb County sheriff

Moultrie Sessions, with Herbert Clay, had been part of the Marietta delegation at Governor Slaton's June clemency hearing; his statement was to remind the governor of the "bloodthirsty" maligning and misrepresentation of Georgia by news reports from other states.^[169][149]

Hanging

The man on the far right in the straw hat is Newton A. Morris, a superior court judge.^[170]

The crowd sold souvenirs of the lynching, including pieces of his nightshirt and rope.

On the afternoon of August 16, the eight cars of the lynching party left Marietta one by one, heading for Milledgeville. They arrived at the prison shortly before midnight and cut the telephone wires, emptied the gas from the prison's automobiles, handcuffed the warden, seized Frank and drove away. The 175-mile trip took seven hours, through small towns on back roads. Lookouts in the towns telephoned ahead to the next town as soon as they saw the line of open cars pass by. A site at Frey's Gin, two miles (3 km) east of Marietta, had been prepared, complete with a rope and table supplied by former sheriff William Frey.^[171]

According to a New York Times article dated August 18, 1915, one of the lynchers said to Frank: "Mr Frank, we are now going to do what the law said to do—hang you by the neck until you are dead. Do you want to make any statement before you die?" Frank reportedly answered, "No." The lyncher asked him: "We want to know whether you are guilty or innocent of killing little Mary Phagan." The lynchers said Frank replied: "I think more of my wife and my mother than I do of my own life." The Times reports that he did not ask permission to write a letter, or make any other request.^[172]

The lynchers tied a piece of brown canvas around his waist. He was otherwise wearing a nightshirt and undershirt, and was handcuffed. They tied a new three-quarter-inch manila rope in a hangman's knot so it would throw his head back and his chin up. It was placed around his neck and slung over a branch of a large Georgia oak. He was turned to face the direction of the house Phagan had lived in, and was hanged at around 7 am.^[172]

This image was published as a postcard.

One of the onlookers, Robert E. Lee Howell—related to Clark Howell, editor of The Atlanta Constitution—wanted to have the body cut into pieces and burned, and began to run around, screaming, whipping up the crowd, shouting that the body might be a dummy. Judge Newt Morris tried to restore order, and asked for a vote to ask whether the body should be returned to the parents intact; only Howell disagreed. When the body was cut down, Howell started stamping on Frank's face and chest, but Morris quickly placed the body in a basket, and he and his driver John Stephens Wood drove it out of Marietta.^[172]

Pieces of Frank's nightshirt were torn off his body to keep as memorabilia. Low-hanging branches of the tree were cut down and carried away as souvenirs. Postcards featuring pictures of the Knights of Mary Phagan and others posing in front of Frank's hanging body were sold for years in Georgia stores. The Marietta hardware stores sold out of rope.^[173] In Atlanta thousands besieged the undertaker's parlor, demanding to see the body; after they began throwing bricks they were allowed to file past the corpse.^[174] The New York Times wrote at the time that the vast majority of Cobb County believed Frank had received his just deserts, and that the mob had simply stepped in to uphold the law after Governor Slaton arbitrarily set it aside.^[172] Frank was buried in the Mount Carmel Cemetery in Glendale, Queens, New York.

Aftermath

Newspaper article after the lynching.

After Frank's lynching, approximately half of Georgia's 3,000 Jews left the state.^[175] Many American Jews saw Frank as an American Alfred Dreyfus. The intensity of the national and international attention on the case was comparable to that in the 1932 kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh's son. In part because Frank was the president of the B'nai B'rith chapter in Atlanta, Georgia, the organization decided to create the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith in 1913. Adolph Kraus, president of B'nai B'rith, invited 15 prominent members in Chicago to form the ADL in September that year, one month after Frank's conviction.^[176]

Two weeks after the lynching, in the September 2, 1915 issue of The Jeffersonian, Watson looked to the future by looking back. He reminisced that he had been only a young boy in the days of the old Ku Klux Klan, and to the warning "we will meet the Leo Frank League with a Gentile League, if they provoke us much further;" he added, "another Ku Klux Klan may be organized to restore HOME RULE.'" Of the murder of Frank, he observed that "the voice of the people is the voice of God."^[177] In 1914, when Watson began hammering home his anti-Frank message, The Jeffersonian's circulation had been 25,000; by September 2, 1915 its circulation was 87,000.^[178]

Criticism of the lynching.

On October 16, 1915, two months to the night after Frank was taken from the Milledgeville prison, members of the Knights of Mary Phagan burned a gigantic cross atop Stone Mountain.^[179] Southerners who believed Frank was guilty saw similarities between the Frank trial and The Birth of a Nation.^[180] There was class and sectional resentment against educated northern industrialists, for whom many southerners worked in factories. The Georgia politician and publisher Watson used the case as a stepping stone to build personal political power and support for a rebirth and revival of the Ku Klux Klan. Members s of the lynch mob decided to create a new Klan. They inaugurated it on Thanksgiving night, 1915, before a burning cross at the top of Stone Mountain. The group was led by William J. Simmons and attended by 15 charter members and a few aging survivors of the original Klan.^[181]

Reflecting contemporary fears of rapid social change, including the waves of new Catholic and Jewish immigrants from southern and eastern Europe who poured into the late 19th and early 20th century United States, the new Klan had an antisemitic, anti-Catholic, and nativist slant. The Klan grew rapidly in major cities of the Midwest, such as Detroit, Chicago, and Indianapolis, where there were dramatic population growth and industrialization. The Klan also grew in Southern industrializing cities that grew rapidly from 1910–1930, such as Dallas and Houston. In all these cities, neighborhoods changed quickly, people moved from farms into cities for the first time, competition for jobs and housing was fierce, the housing market could not keep up with demand, and competition led to violence among groups struggling for place. After World War I, the Klan continued to grow as a result of postwar social strains, and the effort to assimilate thousands of veterans into the job market. It declined rapidly after the late 1920s.

Developments in the 1980s

Alonzo Mann's affidavit

In 1982, nearly 70 years after the murder, Alonzo Mann, who had been Frank's office boy, volunteered that he had seen Jim Conley alone at the factory carrying Phagan's body. This contradicted Conley's testimony that Frank had paid him to move the girl's dead body. Mann swore in an affidavit that Conley had threatened to kill him if he reported what he had seen, and when he told his family, his parents made him swear not to tell anyone. He finally decided to make a statement in what he called an effort to die in peace. He passed a lie detector test, and died three years later at the age of 85.

Posthumous pardon

After denying him a pardon in 1983, the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles agreed to grant one on March 11, 1986, after hearing arguments from lawyers representing Jewish groups.^[182] The pardon said:

Without attempting to address the question of guilt or innocence, and in recognition of the State's failure to protect the person of Leo M. Frank and thereby preserve his opportunity for continued legal appeal of his conviction, and in recognition of the State's failure to bring his killers to justice, and as an effort to heal old wounds, the State Board of Pardons and Paroles, in compliance with its Constitutional and statutory authority, hereby grants to Leo M. Frank a Pardon.^[183]

Memorials

The site of the hanging was marked by a plaque on a nearby building, reading "Wrongly accused. Falsely convicted. Wantonly murdered," placed there by Rabbi Steven Lebow of Temple Kol Emeth on the 80th anniversary of the lynching.^[8] On March 7, 2008, another plaque was erected by the Georgia Historical Society, the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation, and Temple Kol Emeth, on the building at 1200 Roswell Road, Marietta. It reads:

Near this location on August 17, 1915, Leo M. Frank, the Jewish superintendent of the National Pencil Company in Atlanta, was lynched for the murder of thirteen-year-old Mary Phagan, a factory employee. A highly controversial trial fueled by societal tensions and anti-Semitism resulted in a guilty verdict in 1913. After Governor John M. Slaton commuted his sentence from death to life in prison, Frank was kidnapped from the state prison in Milledgeville and taken to Phagan's hometown of Marietta where he was hanged before a local crowd. Without addressing guilt or innocence, and in recognition of the state's failure to either protect Frank or bring his killers to justice, he was granted a posthumous pardon in 1986.^[184]

See also

• Antisemitism in the United States
• Focus (novel) (1945)
• Focus (film) (2002)
• Murder in Harlem (1935)
• The Gunsaulus Mystery (1921)

About the Frank case

• Parade (musical) (1998)
• The Murder of Mary Phagan (1988)
• They Won't Forget (1937)

Notes

References

Further reading

Lynching in the United States The lynched Will Brown · Cordie Cheek · Joe Coe · Anthony Crawford · Michael Donald · Duluth lynchings · Wesley Everest · Leo Frank · Raymond Gunn · Sam Hose · Ed Johnson · Frank Little · Steve Long · Laura and Lawrence Nelson · Mack Charles Parker · George Parrott · Ell Persons · Henry Plummer · Robert Prager · Reno Gang · Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith · Henry Smith · Bill Sketoe · Hyrum Smith · Joseph Smith · Lamar Smith · Joseph Standing · Emmett Till · Mary Turner · Jesse Washington Issues East St. Louis Riot · Jim Crow laws · Lynching · Lynching in the United States · Nadir of American race relations · Omaha Race Riot of 1919 · Tulsa race riot · Rosewood massacre Book, films, and songs Strange fruit Writers James Allen · Ida B. Wells Categories Lynching in the United States · Lynching deaths in the United States