Leo Frank

Fulton County, GA

Leo Frank

Apr 26, 1913 (Atlanta)

Leo Frank was a Jewish businessman who managed a pencil factory. He was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of a 13-year-old employee, Mary Phagan. Phagan's apparent murderer was black. However, as Phagan's minister, O. L. Brickner, put it, "One old Negro would be poor atonement for the life of this innocent girl. But when on the next day, the police arrested a Jew, and a Yankee at that, all of the inborn prejudices against Jews rose up in a feeling of satisfaction that here would be a victim worthy to pay for the crime."

The conviction was based on the testimony of factory janitor, Jim Conley, whom many thought was the true murderer. Following the conviction and during Frank's appeals, many Georgians became incensed by Northern and later non-Georgian Southern press reports about the case. In many respects, Frank was given an eminently fair trial, not characterized by anti-Semitism or hooliganism. The prosecutor even praised Judah P. Benjamin, a Jew who served as the Confederate Government's secretary of state.

Georgia, at the time, had a tradition of private justice characteristic of pre-industrial times mixed with mass media newspapers characteristic of the modern era. The combination produced a mob spirit that was never far below the surface. Jurors, who might have rendered a just verdict, had reason to be afraid.

In 1915, Gov. John Slaton commuted Frank's sentence to life because of doubts about his guilt. (He privately thought him innocent.) After the announcement, a mob stormed the Governor's mansion. Some weeks later, a second mob abducted Frank from a state prison and lynched him. In the anti-Semitic hysteria that followed, other Jews were attacked and many were forced to flee the state.

Frank's case became the catalyst for the formation of the Jewish Anti-Defamation League as well as for the resurgence of the Klu Klux Klan. In 1913, Frank employed a 14-year-old office boy named Alonzo Mann. In 1982, Mann came forward and said he had seen Conley carrying Phagan's body. In 1913, he was afraid of Conley, and his mother told him not to get involved. In March 1986, Georgia granted Frank a posthumous pardon. A book was written about the case entitled The Leo Frank Case. (CrimeLibrary) (Famous Trials) [11/05]