Leo Frank’s lynching 105 years ago commemorated

By Jerry Klinger

 

MARIETTA, Georgia — One hundred and five years ago this week, a horrible lynching occurred in this city. The Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation, with support from the ADL and Rabbi Steven Lebow of Temple Kol Emeth, placed the first National Anti-lynching Memorial at the site.

Leo Frank, an Atlanta Jewish businessman, the President of his local B’Nai Brith Chapter, was lynched in Marietta by a mob intent on getting more than their pound of flesh from the Jew.

Frank had been accused, tried, and convicted in a travesty of injustice, after a trial stained by racism and antisemitism for the murder of 13-year-old Mary Phagan. Mary was an employee of Frank’s at his Atlanta’s National Pencil factory. Her badly abused, partially clothed body was found at the bottom of an elevator shaft Saturday night by a Black custodian. She had gone to Atlanta to see the afternoon parade celebrating Confederate Memorial Day. But first, she stopped by Leo’s office. He was working that morning, as was his custom. She sought to collect her week’s wages.

The sensationalized trial brought out huge, angry mobs waiting in the street below the courtroom. The Georgia media’s reporting encouraged their basest desires, the Jew’s blood. It was an open and shut case to them, even if the presented evidence was, at best, circumstantial. What mattered the most to them was the contrast, the little Christian White girl, and the Jew.

The courtroom theatrics riveted Georgia. They reverberated across the United States to cheers and horror.

Frank was sentenced to death by the very judge who later had deep misgivings about the trial. Governor John Slaton, personally, chose to review all the evidence. He went to the Pencil factory, looked at the physical site, earnestly considered the meaning of the jury decision. He too was left with very painful misgivings about justice gone awry.

Governor Slaton courageously commuted Leo’s death sentence. Slaton put his own life at risk and destroyed his political career.
At Slaton’s order, Frank was moved to the State’s Milledgeville Prison, site of a branch today of the University of Georgia. It was believed a safer location than Atlanta. Slaton’s actions enraged the mobs.

Members of the best of Cobb County, Georgia, and Marietta’s community organized themselves into the Knights of Mary Phagan. They broke into the Milledgeville prison, almost effortlessly, kidnapping Frank. He was brought to Marietta, Phagan’s hometown. Word of mouth had assembled a huge, festive crowd to await Frank’s lynching.

As the sun arose, crowds assembled, little children were lifted on shoulders for a better view of Leo awaiting his fate, the rope slung over a strong tree branch, cinched about his neck. Photographs were taken, later sold as souvenirs. Leo’s last request was honored. He asked that his wedding ring be given to his soon to be widow. The chair upon which Leo stood was kicked out. He lurched downward, his legs and lower body jerked in the air. Leo’s neck snapped. Leo was dead.

The mob felt good. The world was not good.

Leo’s body was taken to New York and buried in his family’s plot. His footstone read, Semper idem… Always the Same.
Was Leo’s fate and story, even in America, always the same for the Jew?

Steven Lebow, Rabbi of Temple Kol Emeth in Marietta, had been holding annual commemorative services at the Frank lynching site since the late 1990s. The Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation (JASHP) learned the Frank site was going to be lost forever when an off-ramp for Interstate 75 was to be built. JASHP initiated and funded an effort, joining with Rabbi Lebow, the ADL, and the Georgia Historical Society (GHS) to place a GHS marker at the site. Under Georgia law, if a GHS marker was at a historical site, after redevelopment, it was to be reinstalled.

The redevelopment occurred. The Leo Frank historical marker was resited, (2018), by the Georgia Department of Transportation on a small strip of land adjacent to the off-ramp. They designated it, The Leo Frank Memorial.

After the reinstalled and rededicated GHS marker was sited, JASHP realized the meaning of the Leo Frank Memorial was incomplete. Nowhere in Georgia, or for that matter nowhere in the United States was there a memorial to all the victims of hatred, prejudice and ignorance. In Georgia alone, over 570 Georgians were lynched. Most were of the victims were Black.

Nationally, over 5,500 lynchings, public displays of societal terrorism pretending to be popular justice, have been documented. Two-thirds of the documented lynchings have been Black Americans. The rest have been White, Brown, Yellow and Red, men, and women. The true number of undocumented victims will never be known.

Without a memorial to all the victims of racial bigotry, the meaning of the Leo Frank Memorial was incomplete. Injustice done to one human being is injustice done to all of us.

JASHP joined again with Rabbi Lebow and the ADL, placing the first National Anti-Lynching Memorial at the Leo Frank site.  The small memorial siting was made possible because of the direct governmental intervention of the late Congressman John Lewis.

For the first time in Georgia, there was a central location to mourn, remember, honor, and educate re the meaning of the over 570 documented Georgian’s who were lynching victims. Visitors come and place small memorial stones at the site.

Contemporarily, the Black Lives Matter movement, at times, is very controversial. They run a short television spot that is very effective.

“Until Black Lives Matter, no lives matter.”

At the Leo Frank Memorial, Black Lives lost to hatred, bigotry and ignorance, matter. Black lives matter, so do all lives lost everywhere to hatred, prejudice, and ignorance, including Jewish lives.

Leo Frank was murdered August 17, 1915. Though a long time ago, the continuing need for change today, for tomorrow, remains.

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Jerry Klinger is the founding president of the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation.