Leo Frank

Leo Max Frank
Lucille and Leo Frank at Frank's trial
Born	(1884-04-17)April 17, 1884 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
Nationality	American
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
Parent(s)	Rudolf and Rachel (Rae) 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 party 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.

The superintendent of the National Pencil Company in Atlanta, Frank was convicted on August 26, 1913 of the murder of one of the factory workers, 13-year-old Mary Phagan. She had been found dead in the factory cellar on April 27 with a cord round her neck that a pathologist said had been used to strangle her the day before. Frank was one of the few people in the factory that day; he had met Phagan there when she came in for her wages, making him the last person known to have seen her alive, and there were allegations that he had flirted with her in the past. His trial became the focus of powerful class and political 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. 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. Frank and his lawyers resorted to stereotypes too: another suspect, Jim Conley—a factory worker who testified against Frank—was a "filthy, lying nigger," they said, just the kind who would commit such a brutish crime.

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 in June 1915, after Frank's legal appeals failed, he commuted the sentence to life imprisonment—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. 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.

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.

Background

Leo Frank

Leo Frank

Frank was born in Cuero, Texas to Rudolf and Rachel Frank, but 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 often. After graduating he studied mechanical engineering at Cornell University, where he joined the debating team, and took up landscape photography as a hobby. After graduating, he gained employment with the B.T. Sturtevant Company in Hyde Park, Massachusetts as an engineer 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; Moses, himself a southerner, had just invested in it. Frank agreed, and traveled to Germany to study pencil manufacturing at Eberhard Faber, moving to Atlanta in 1908.

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. 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, 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. 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. 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.

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. Her paternal grandfather, W.J. Phagan, provided Phagan's mother and four siblings a home near his in Marietta, 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. 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. 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. 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 fueled resentment against the factory owners, regularly attacked by The Atlanta Georgian.

Events at the factory, April 26–27, 1913

One of the two murder notes found near the body

Phagan worked in the metal room on the second floor of the factory, down the hall from Leo Frank's office. Around noon on Saturday, April 26, she went to the factory to claim her pay.

At approximately 3:00 a.m. on Sunday, April 27 the factory's night watchman, Newt Lee, went to the factory basement to use the Negro toilet. He said he discovered the body of a dead girl, and called the police, meeting them at the front door and leading them to the body. Mary Phagan's body, face down, was partially hidden near a shed. Dress up around her knees, her face and head were bruised and battered, with blood coming from her mouth and ears. A seven foot strip of 3/4 inch wrapping cord was tied around her neck. Initially there was an appearance of rape. The first analysis, based on the observation that "the grinds and ashes that were everywhere had adhered to her skin," was that Phagan and her assailant had struggled in the basement.

A service ramp at the rear of the basement led to a sliding door that opened into the alley; the police found that it had been tampered with so that it could be opened without unlocking it. Later examination found bloody fingerprints on the door as well as a metal pipe that had been used as a crowbar. Some evidence at the crime scene was improperly handled by the police investigators. The boards from the door with the bloody prints were removed and subsequently lost before any analysis could be done. Bloody fingerprints were found on the victim's jacket, but there is no indication that they were ever analyzed. A trail in the dirt along which police believed Phagan had been dragged was trampled and no footprints were ever identified.

Perhaps the most significant evidence found at the scene were the so-called "murder notes". The two notes were found in the pile of rubbish where Phagan's head rested. One said: "he said he wood love me land down play like the night witch did it but that long tall black negro did boy his slef.” The other said, “mam that negro hire down here did this i went to make water and he push me down that hole a long tall negro black that hoo it wase long sleam tall negro i write while play with me." The effect of the discovery was to cast suspicion on Newt Lee. During the trial "night witch" was interpreted to mean "night watch[man]"; when he read the note night watchman Newt Lee said, "Boss, that's me." Another significant discovery was a fresh mound of human excrement in the elevator, though the significance was not recognized until after the trial.

Murder investigation

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

At first Frank said that Lee's time card was complete. It was supposed to be punched every half hour during the watchman's rounds. Later Frank said Lee had not punched the card at three intervals. The police investigated a variety of suspects, and arrested both Lee and a young friend of Phagan's for the crime. Gradually they became convinced that they were not the culprits. A detective sneaked into Lee's apartment and found a blood-soaked shirt. The prosecution later claimed that the shirt had been planted by Frank in order to incriminate Lee. Suspicion did not at first fall on Frank. The police later noted that he had not answered the phone when they called his house at 4 a.m., and that he seemed extremely nervous when they forced him to go to the factory with them before dawn. They took his detailed answers on minor points as a sign of suspicion. Frank was trembling so strongly that he could not carry out simple physical tasks. Frank pointed out at the trial that the police had refused to tell him the nature of their investigation when they came to his house and made him accompany them.

The Atlanta Constitution broke the story. Soon 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 William Randolph 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. Some evidence went missing when it was 'borrowed' from the police by reporters. The two papers offered a total of $1,800 in reward money for information leading to the apprehension of the murderer.

Suspicion falls on Frank

The police later noted that Frank had not answered the phone when they called his house at 4 a.m., and that he seemed extremely nervous when they forced him to go to the factory with them before dawn. They also took his detailed answers on minor points as a sign of suspicion. Frank was trembling so strongly that he could not carry out simple physical tasks. Frank pointed out at the trial that the police had refused to tell him the nature of their investigation when they came to his house and made him accompany them.

Phagan's friend, 13 year old pencil factory worker George Epps, came forward to say that Frank had flirted with Phagan and had frightened her.

The police appeared to intimidate and influence witnesses, such as Nina Formby, the madam of a bordello, and the Franks' housekeeper. They both recanted statements made to the police after they were away from them, Formby indicating the police had "plied her with whisky." Frank hired two Pinkerton detectives to help him prove his innocence. Though Frank produced alibis for the entire time during which the crime could have been committed, suspicion was aroused by his waiting a week to bring forward one crucial witness, Lemmie Quinn. Gradually, however, the Georgian began to take Frank's side, responding to outrage from Atlanta 's Jewish community. Meanwhile, the Constitution continued to criticize the police for their lack of progress.

Jim Conley

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

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 work shirt. 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. 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 bottle of rye, 90 cents won at dice, and 15 cents for beer, twice. 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.

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. 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; he apparently told Conley he had some wealthy people in Brooklyn, and asked: "Why should I hang?"

[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.

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.

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 Conley had strangled Phagan when he was drunk. 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. The police were satisfied with the new story and both The Atlanta 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. 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

On May 29 Conley was interviewed for four hours. 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." Conley'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." 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.

William Smith

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William Smith represented Conley, but after the trial declared him guilty.

The Georgian hired William Smith to represent Conley. 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.

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.

Trial

The first day of the trial. Spectators were racially segregated. The stenographer can be seen next to Newt Lee, who is being questioned by prosecutor Hugh Dorsey.

On May 24, 1913, a murder indictment was returned against Frank by a grand jury. The trial began on July 28. The windows were left open because of the heat, and in addition to the hundreds of spectators inside, a crowd gathered outside to watch the trial through the windows, a circumstance that became important as a factor in witness and jury intimidation.

The prosecutor was Hugh M. Dorsey. Frank was represented by eight lawyers (some of them jury selection specialists), led by Luther Rosser. The defense used peremptory challenges to eliminate the only two black jurors. The prosecution's theory was that Conley's last affidavit was true, Frank was the murderer, and the murder notes had been dictated by Frank in an effort to pin the crime on Lee. The defense's theory was that Conley was the murderer, and that Lee helped Conley write the notes. The defense brought numerous witnesses who attested to Frank's alibi, which did not leave him enough time to have committed the crime.

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Prosecutor Hugh Dorsey, later governor of Georgia

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Lead defense lawyer Luther Rosser.

Conley reiterated his testimony from his final affidavit. He added to it by describing Frank as regularly having sex with women in his upstairs office on Saturdays while Conley kept a lookout. Another witness who, like Conley, had a criminal record, corroborated Conley. Although Conley admitted that he had changed his story and lied repeatedly, this did not damage the prosecution's case as much as might have been expected. Conley admitted to being an accessory, so it wasn't surprising that he had lied at first. Also, many white observers did not believe that a black man could have been intelligent enough to make up such a complicated story.

The Georgian wrote, "Many people are arguing to themselves that the negro, 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." Defense witnesses testified that there were too many people in the factory on Saturdays for Frank to have had trysts there. They pointed out that the windows of Frank's office lacked curtains. A large number of female factory workers testified for the defense of Frank's good character when it came to women.

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 thus none occurred. Most of his four-hour speech consisted of an extremely long and detailed analysis of the accounting work he had done the day of Phagan's murder, meant to show that the act was too time-consuming for him to have committed the murder. He ended with a description of how he viewed the crime, including an effective, and by some accounts moving, explanation of his nervousness:

Gentlemen, I was nervous. I was completely unstrung. Imagine yourself called from sound slumber in the early hours of the morning ... To see that little girl on the dawn of womanhood so cruelly murdered — it was a scene that would have melted stone.

In its closing statements, the defense attempted 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." Frank himself had issued a widely publicized statement questioning how the "perjured vaporizings of a black brute" could be accepted in testimony against him.

The prosecutor compared Frank to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He said that Frank had killed Phagan to keep her from talking. With the sensational coverage, public sentiment in Atlanta turned strongly against Frank. The defense requested a mistrial because it felt the jurors had been intimidated, but the motion was denied. In case of an acquittal, the judge feared for the safety of Frank and his lawyers, so he brokered a deal in which they would not be present when the verdict was read. On August 25, Frank was convicted of murder. 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."

After the trial

Appeals

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, and 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." Subsequently, 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.'

Clemency

Local politician Tom Watson campaigned against Frank in the Jeffersonian.

Politician and journalist Tom Watson continued his campaign against Frank, warning in the Jeffersonian: "If Frank's rich connections keep on lying about this case, SOMETHING BAD WILL HAPPEN."

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. Slaton reviewed more than 10,000 pages of documents, visited the pencil factory, and examined new evidence, including studies comparing Conley's speech patterns to the language of the murder notes. He told reporters: "some of the most powerful evidence in [Frank's] behalf was not presented the jury which found him guilty." During the hearing former Governor Brown 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."

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

On June 21, 1915—six days before Nathaniel Edwin Harris, the new governor, was to take office and one day before Frank was scheduled to hang—Slaton commuted Frank's sentence to life in prison. "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."

The public was outraged, in part because of what they saw as Slaton's conflict of interest: during Frank's trial Slaton had been made a partner in the law firm headed by Rosser, Frank's lead defense counsel. Tom Watson railed against the decision: "Are the old lessons lifeless? Are the old glories gone? Are there no feet that tread the old paths? Once, there were men in Georgia — men who were afraid of nothing, save to do wrong; men who sprang to arms, and went to death, on a bare question of principle.... [O]ur grand old Empire State HAS BEEN RAPED! .... We have been violated, AND WE ARE ASHAMED!" A mob threatened to attack the governor at home. A detachment of the Georgia National Guard, along with county policemen and a group of Slaton's friends who were sworn in as deputies, dispersed the mob. Slaton had been a popular governor, but he and his wife left Georgia immediately.

Frank had been taken to the Milledgeville State Penitentiary the day before. A fellow inmate tried to kill him, slashing his throat and nearly severing his jugular vein. 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.

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. 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." "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." 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."

"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. 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. The ringleaders were named as:

• 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

• John Augustus Benson, merchant
• D.R. Benton, Mary Phagan's uncle
• "Yellow Jacket" Brown, electrician
• Bolan Glover Brumby, manufacturer, owner of the Marietta Chair Company
• Jim Brumby, garage owner who serviced the cars
• Luther Burton, coal yard operator
• George Exie Daniell, merchant
• Cicero Holton Dobbs, taxi driver
• John Tucker Dorsey, who later served as the Circuit's district attorney

• C.D. Elder, physician
• Gordon Baxter Gann, lawyer, later mayor of Marietta and a state legislator
• Robert A. Hill, banker who helped fund the group
• Horace Hamby, farmer
• Lawrence Haney, farmer
• Ralph Molden Manning, contractor
• L.B. Robeson, railroad freight agent who provided a car
• Moultrie McKinney Sessions, lawyer and banker
• "Coon" Shaw, mule trader

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.

Hanging

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

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 lynch mob 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.

According to a New York Times article dated August 18, 1915, a member of the mob 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.

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.

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.

Pieces of Frank's nightshirt were torn off his body by the mob 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. 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. 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 lynch party had simply stepped in to uphold the law after Governor Slaton arbitrarily set it aside. 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. 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.

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." 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.

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 on top of Stone Mountain, reportedly inaugurating a revival of the Ku Klux Klan. The group was led by William J. Simmons and attended by 15 charter members and a few aging survivors of the original Klan.

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

The Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles denied Frank a pardon in 1983. It was hindered in its investigation by the lack of available records. Conley could not be located and was probably dead. The state's files on the case were lost and with them the opportunity to apply modern forensic techniques, such as comparing Frank's dental records with photographs of bite marks on Phagan's body. It concluded that, "After exhaustive review and many hours of deliberation, it is impossible to decide conclusively the guilt or innocence of Leo. M. Frank. For the board to grant a pardon, the innocence of the subject must be shown conclusively." A second application was submitted in 1986 by lawyers representing Jewish groups, this one asking the state only to recognize its culpability over his death. The board granted the pardon on March 11, 1986. It 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.

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. 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.

See also

• Antisemitism in the United States
• The Gunsaulus Mystery (1921)
• Murder in Harlem (1935)

About the Frank case

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

References

• Bernstein, Matthew. Screening a Lynching: The Leo Frank Case on Film and Television. University of Georgia Press, 2009.
• Brundage, William Fitzhugh. Under Sentence of Death: Lynching in the South. University of North Carolina Press, 1997.
• Dillard, Phillip D., and Randall Hall (eds.) The Southern Albatross: Race and Ethnicity in the American South. Mercer University Press, 1999.
• Dinnerstein, Leonard. The Leo Frank Case. University of Georgia Press, 1987.
• Frank v. Mangum, 237 U.S. 309 (1915) Justia
• Harris, Nathaniel E. The Story of an Old Man's Life". The J.W. Burke Company, 1925.
• Higham, John. Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925. Rutgers University Press, 1988.
• Golden, Harry. The Lynching of Leo Frank. Cassell & Co, 1966.
• Horn, Stanley F. Invisible Empire: The Story of the Ku Klux Klan, 1866-1871. Patterson Smith Publishing Corporation, 1939.
• Knight, Alfred H. The Life of the Law. Oxford University Press, 1996.
• Levy, Eugene. "Is the Jew a White Man?" in Maurianne Adams and John H. Bracey. Strangers & Neighbors: Relations Between Blacks & Jews in the United States. University of Massachusetts Press, 2000.
• Lindemann, Albert S. The Jew Accused: Three Anti-Semitic Affairs (Dreyfus, Beilis, Frank), 1894-1915. Cambridge University Press, 1991.
• Linder, Douglas O. "Famous Trials: The Leo Frank Trial, 1913". University of Missouri - Kansas City School of Law], accessed October 31, 2010.
• Maclean, Nancy. Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan. Oxford University Press, 1994.
• MacLean, Nancy. "The Leo Frank Case Reconsidered: Gender and Sexual Politics in the Making of Reactionary Populism." The Journal of American History Vol. 78, No. 3, December 1991, pp. 917–948
• Melnick, Jeffrey Paul. Black-Jewish Relations on Trial: Leo Frank and Jim Conley in the New South. University Press of Mississippi, 2000.
• Oney, Steve. And the Dead Shall Rise: The Murder of Mary Phagan and the Lynching of Leo Frank. Pantheon Books, 2003.
• Phagan, Mary. The Murder of Little Mary Phagan. Horizon Press, 1987.
• Scott, Thomas Allan. Cornerstones of Georgia History: Documents that Formed the State. University of Georgia Press, 1995.
• Stokes, Melvyn. D. W. Griffith's the Birth of a Nation. Oxford University Press, 2007.
• Wade, Wyn Craig. The Fiery Cross: The Ku Klux Klan in America. Simon and Schuster, 1987.
• Woodward, Comer Vann. Tom Watson: Agrarian Rebel. Oxford University Press, 1963.

Further reading

• Allen, James (ed.), Hilton Als, Jon Lewis, and Leon F. Litwack. Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America. Twin Palms Publishers, 2000.
• Arnold, Reuben. The Trial of Leo M. Frank, Reuben Rose Arnold's Full Address to the Court in his Behalf, Classic Publishing Co., 1915, accessed October 31, 2010.

• Dorsey, Hugh. "Arguments of Hugh M. Dorsey in the Leo Frank Murder Trial", N. Christophulos, August 1913, accessed October 31, 2010.

• Dinnerstein, Leonard. "The Fate of Leo Frank", American Heritage, 47, October 1996, pp. 98–109.
• Freedman, Samuel J. "Never Forget", Salon, January 12, 1999.
• Gaines, Luan. Review of Stephen Oney, And the Dead Shall Rise: The Murder of Mary Phagan and Lynching of Leo Frank, curledup.com, 2003, accessed August 23, 2010.
• Glover, James Bolan, V, and Joe McTyre and Rebecca Nash Paden. Marietta, 1833-2000. Arcadia Publishing, 1999.
• Hertzberg, Steven. Strangers Within the Gate City: The Jews of Atlanta, 1845-1915. The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1978.
• Kean, Mary Phagan. "The Murder of Little Mary Phagan". New Horizon Press, 1987.
• Lawson, John Davison (ed.). American State Trials Volume X (1918), contains the abridged trial testimony starting on p. 182, accessed August 23, 2010.
• Mamat, David. The Old Religion. The Overlook Press, 2002.

• Egelman, Sarah Rachel. Review of David Mamet, The Old Religion, accessed August 23, 2010.

• Melnick, Jeffrey. Black-Jewish Relations on Trial: Leo Frank and Jim Conley in the New South. University Press of Mississippi, 2000.
• Ravitz, Jessica. "Murder case, Leo Frank lynching live on", CNN, November 2, 2009.
• Rodriguez, Yolanda. "Story of Jewish businessman's lynching gets new attention"], Atlanta Journal-Constitution, August 14, 2005.
• The Cincinnati Post. "Letters probe killer's mind: Frank pleads his innocence", August 5, 2002.
• The New York Times. "Leo Frank Wrote His Own Alibi"", August 22, 1915.
• Union Recorder (Milledgeville). "Leo. M. Frank Taken from State Farm and Lynched", August 17, 1915.
• Wilkes, Donald E., Jr. "Politics, Prejudice, and Perjury", University of Georgia School of Law; also see "Wrongly Accused, Falsely Convicted, Wantonly Murdered", University of Georgia School of Law, accessed August 23, 2010.
• "The Frank Case" The Inside Story of Georgia's Greatest Murder Mystery, published anonymously, Atlanta Publishing Company, 1913.
• "Marietta's Shame: The Lynching of Leo Frank." Atlanta Nation
• Leo Frank, Jewish Virtual Library, accessed October 31, 2010.
• A few seconds of Alonzo Mann, Posthumous pardon to Leo Frank denied (1984) YouTube
• People v Leo Frank, review of the documentary, People v Leo Frank (2009), a film about Leo Frank by Ben Loeterman.
• Leo Frank Clemency File, images of original documents related to the clemency petition, including Gov. Slaton's notes, accessed October 31, 2010.

Historical Archives

• American Jewish Archive. Leo M. Frank Collection 1913-1965.
• Brandeis University Leo Frank Trial Collection, 1909-1961
• Emory University Leo Frank Collection, 1915–1986
• New South and Leo Frank, digital archive of original images and documents about the Leo M. Frank Case c. 1905 to 1986.
• New York Public Library. Digital gallery of original Leo M. Frank Case photographs. Leo M. Frank Case defense theory on the stages of the murder of Mary Phagan commissioned by New York Times owner Adolph Ochs.
• William Breman Jewish Heritage & Holocaust Museum of The Atlanta Jewish Federation. Leo M. Frank Collection 1878 to 1983.

Dramatizations

• The Murder of Mary Phagan (1987), IMDb.com, accessed August 23, 2010. The film stars Jack Lemmon, Peter Gallagher, and Kevin Spacey, and won an Emmy in 1988.

• The New York Times. "The Murder of Mary Phagan (1987)", accessed August 23, 2010.

• During the trial an Atlanta musician and millworker, Fiddlin' John Carson, wrote and began performing a murder ballad, "Little Mary Phagan." During the mill strikes of 1914 Carson sang "Little Mary Phagan" to crowds from the Fulton County courthouse steps. An unrecorded Carson song, "Dear Old Oak in Georgia," sentimentalizes the tree from which Leo Frank was hanged.
• The 1964 television series "Profiles in Courage" dramatized Governor John M. Slaton's decision to commute Frank's sentence, The episode starred Walter Matthau as Governor Slaton and Michael Constantine as Tom Watson.
• Jamie Saft wrote a song, The Ballad of Leo Frank. The story of Frank's trial and eventual lynching is included in the liner notes of Saft's album entitled Black Shabbis.