Nearly 100 years later, the case and trial of Leo Frank is making headlines again. Doubts about the 1913 murder of Atlanta teen Mary Phagan and accused suspect Frank — said to be U.S. history’s only Jewish lynching victim — have long fueled conspiracy theories.
Tonight's PBS documentary, “The People vs. Leo Frank,” has revived the mysteries and public curiosity: Yahoo! search spikes for "Phagan" and "Frank" soared in advance of the show’s airing. Back in the day, the public would “stay tuned to see the latest bizarre, frightening development,” says a historian in “The People vs. Leo Frank.” Indeed, the century-old “whodunit,” CNN notes in one of its most popular articles today, touched on "every hot-button issue of the time: North vs. South, black vs. white, Jew vs. Christian, industrial vs. agrarian."
Leo Frank was raised in Brooklyn and later moved with his wife to Atlanta, Georgia, to manage his uncle’s pencil factory after graduating from Cornell University. Mary Phagan was one of Frank's employees, a white child laborer working to help support her family. On April 13, 1913, Phagan went to the factory to receive $1.20 in pay she was owed for the previous week. Frank gave her the check; Phagan was found dead at approximately 3am on April 14 by Newt Lee, the factory's night watchman.
Police initially arrested Lee and a young friend of Phagan's in connection with the crime, but soon focused their attention on Frank after his nervous demeanor and detailed answers to simple questions raised suspicions. Frank was later tried, convicted and sentenced to death based on what many people familiar with the case believe was the perjured testimony of the black man who actually killed Phagan, factory janitor Jim Conley. On the day Frank, 31, was to be executed by the state, then-Georgia Governor John Slaton, who doubted the strength of Frank's conviction after lengthy hearings introduced new evidence and a plea from the original trial's judge, commuted Frank's sentence to life in prison. For Slaton, the move was political suicide.
Predictably, the public reaction to Slaton's action was outrage. An angry mob screaming "kill the Jew" stormed the governor's mansion in protest and had to be fought off by armed militia men, while another mob calling themselves the "Knights of Mary Phagan" stormed the prison and kidnapped Frank. A former governor and the son of a U.S. senator were believed to be among the attackers. Frank was taken to Marietta, Georgia, the town where Mary Phagan was born, and hanged.
Frank's hanging helped inspire the founding of the Anti-Defamation League and provoked more than 3,000 Jews to flee the state. Leo Frank was posthumously pardoned for the murder of Mary Phagan by the state of Georgia in 1986.
“That my vindication will eventually come,” Frank is quoted as saying in the PBS documentary, “I feel certain.”
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Topic: “The People vs. Leo Frank” (Read 1672 times)