Between Frank's conviction in 1913 and his lynching in 1915, a national pro-Frank media campaign met with a backlash of antisemitism.
- THE NEIGHBORHOOD FILES
- Todd Hudson
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Monday, September 12, 2011
In the weeks following Leo Frank’s conviction for the murder of Mary Phagan, two separate campaigns to free the condemned man began to take shape. The first was a legal battle conducted by defense attorneys Luther Rosser and Reuben Arnold, who would appeal the case to the trial judge, the Georgia Supreme Court, the U.S. Supreme Court and the Board of Pardons and Paroles. All of these proved to be of no avail. The second battle, which was both more successful and more incendiary, would take place in the court of public opinion with the news media as its principle combatants. It was in this arena that the issue of anti-Semitism, hitherto no more than a smoldering ember, would be fanned into full blown animosity. The likelihood of this was …
While anti-Semitism played a role in the lynching of Leo Frank, it does not appear to have been a factor in his trial. Read part two in a three-part story.
- THE NEIGHBORHOOD FILES
- Todd Hudson
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Monday, September 5, 2011
As far as I can tell, the popular mythology about the Leo Frank case runs something like this: Leo Frank was charged with murdering Mary Phagan for two reasons: He was a Jew, and he was the last person known to have seen her alive. Anything else was just icing on the cake. He was then railroaded by a prosecution, judge and jury made up of anti-Semitic Georgia bigots who trusted the word of a black man over that of a rich Jew. After the inevitable conviction, Gov. John Slaton, seeing the case for the travesty that it was, stepped in and commuted Frank’s sentence. In reaction to this, an angry mob of Mariettans, determined to see justice done, snatched Frank from his prison cell and hanged him from the nearest tree. As evidence for the …
Mark Cohen
10:06 am on Saturday, July 28, 2012
and put what in its place? more ›