Frank, Leo 1884-1915

FRANK, LEO 1884-1915

Manufacturer, lynching victim

Lynched

Among the most notorious events in America during the 1910s was the lynching of Leo Frank on 16 August 1915 in the woods outside Marietta, Georgia. Frank had been convicted of murder in August 1913, but as his case gained notoriety, his guilt was increasingly questioned, and the anti-Semitic fervor that had surrounded his trial received increasing news coverage, especially in the North. Governor John M. Slaton, after reviewing the case, commuted Frank's death sentence in June 1915, but a frenzied mob refused to accept Slaton's judgment. Frank was abducted from prison and hanged.

Background

Born in Texas in 1884, Frank was raised in New York City. He attended the Pratt Institute, then graduated from Columbia University in 1906 with a degree in mechanical engineering. After briefly working in Boston, he moved to Atlanta, where he became superintendent of the National Pencil Factory. In 1910 Frank married into a wealthy Atlanta family and in 1912 was elected president of the local B'nai B'rith.

The Murder

In the early morning of 27 April 1913 Newt Lee, a night watchman at the National Pencil Factory, found the body of thirteen-year-old Mary Phagan in the basement of the factory. Phagan, a factory employee, had been beaten and choked to death. Even in an Atlanta with large areas of squalor and slums, and where recently violent race riots had occurred, the news of Phagan's murder shocked the city. It also seemed to focus a combination of volatile social currents and undercurrents, many generated by the rapid changes taking place in the South that had left many bewildered. The agrarian South was becoming urban, even as black southerners were emigrating to the North. Atlanta's working poor were mostly white tenant farmers who had moved to the city to work in factories, many of which had been established by northerners. Mary Phagan, from small, rural Marietta, Georgia, was in many ways a typical child in the Atlanta of this period, a part of Atlanta's huge child labor force, which was utterly unregulated by local government. After her brutal murder the local police were under intense pressure to find her killer; they picked up Leo Frank two days after the body was discovered.

Hysteria

The hysteria that followed Phagan's death and the arrest of Frank was provoked largely by Atlanta's three newspapers, the Atlanta Constitution, the Atlanta Journal, and the Atlanta Georgian. The Georgian in particular focused on the Phagan murder. This paper had been purchased by William Randolph Hearst in 1912 and quickly established itself by using the Hearst methods of yellow journalism. Its lurid coverage of the Phagan murder made the Georgian the top-circulating newspaper in the South, with daily sales tripling during the Frank trial. Allegations, misinformation, and rumor dominated the news. Among the rumors that appeared in the papers were tales of Frank's perverse sexual and religious practices: the Jewish faith allowed for the violation of Gentile women, the papers said; Frank's wife knew he was guilty and refused to visit him in jail; Frank had another wife in New York; he had illegitimate children; he was a pervert who preyed on young girls; he was a Mason; he was Catholic. In short, Frank was portrayed as a monster, an outsider, an alien to southern culture, preying upon a young Christian Georgia girl. The hysteria followed the case to trial.

Trial and Appeal

The tragic irony of the Frank case was that the evidence pointed to the prosecution's primary witness, Jim Conley, as the actual murderer. Conley worked as a sweeper in the factory. Later records indicated rampant perjury, coercion, and suppression of evidence on the prosecution's part, but Frank's lawyers performed badly, missing numerous opportunities to damage the prosecution's case. The case was finally decided by issues beyond mere legalities and evidence. Mob rule seemed to be in effect. A public filled with sensationalistic news stories and bent on avenging Mary Phagan's death seemed prepared to accept Frank's guilt unconditionally, and exerted great pressure for conviction. Jurors were intimidated, and some were themselves prejudiced against Frank and his Jewish heritage. The case remained confined to Georgia until the fall of 1913, when Louis Marshall, president of the American Jewish Committee, heard of the miscarriage of justice. When Frank's lawyers appealed the case, Jews in the North began rallying support, albeit privately, certain that overt support would produce even more of a backlash against Frank.

National News

The story broke widely in the national press in late 1914. Newspapers in Baltimore, Kansas City, and New York City began reporting the Frank case. Collier's magazine covered the case in December 1914 and Everybody's covered it the following March. Meanwhile Frank's lawyers, their appeals for a new trial denied, began lobbying Governor Slaton to commute Frank's death sentence. Most Georgians, meanwhile, continued to be convinced of Frank's guilt, and public emotions were greatly exacerbated by Tom Watson, an anti-Semitic newspaper correspondent, whose paper, The Jeffersonian, called for vigilante justice if Frank were set free.

Petitions

By the spring of 1915 the appeals in Frank's favor were massive. More than one hundred thousand letters reached the Georgia governor's office; among them were letters from the governors of Arizona, Louisiana, Michigan, and Mississippi. U.S. senators urged commutation of the death sentence. Meetings were held in Boston, Chicago, New York, and Minneapolis. More than a million signatures on numerous petitions poured into Georgia, and newspapers began lobbying on Frank's behalf. Even ten thousand Georgians petitioned Governor Slaton. In June 1915, near the end of his term as governor, Slaton began studying the notorious case, fully aware how politically charged it was. Then, despite receiving more than a thousand death threats while he reviewed the case, Slaton announced on 21 June that he would commute Frank's sentence to life in prison—fully expecting, he later explained, an eventual new trial and Frank's acquittal.

Aftermath

While the national press responded with jubilation to Slaton's announcement, most Georgians fumed. Meanwhile, the governor had Frank moved secretly to a prison farm near Marietta, where Frank had special living quarters that were barricaded and heavily guarded. Demonstrations against Slaton's commuting of Frank's sentence lasted for more than a week: both Slaton and Frank were burned in effigy, while a group calling itself the Knights of Mary Phagan swore revenge. In July Frank was brutally attacked in prison by other inmates; then, on the morning of 15 August a group of vigilantes stormed the prison farm. After leading Frank into the woods they hanged him.

Source:

Leonard Dinnerstein, The Leo Frank Case (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968).