Leo Frank's ghost still haunts American Jews

[Behind the Aegis]

As Thunderclap Newman would have put it: “There’s something in the air.”

For Jews, that “something” is the pandemic of antisemitism — a pandemic that has gotten so palpable that it earned itself a front page article in the Sunday New York Times.

Antisemitism has a starring role in two hot Broadway plays — “Leopoldstadt,” by Tom Stoppard, and the revival of the musical “Parade,” with a dramatization by Alfred Uhry, music by Jason Robert Brown, and starring Ben Platt.

“Parade” is a tragedy — the story of Leo Frank, the first American Jew to die in antisemitic violence, and the only white person in America to be the victim of lynching.

Several years ago, I spent an evening with a group of Jews in Atlanta, Georgia. I raised the topic of the murder of Leo Frank.

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I doubt many even know who he is, even among Jewish people.

[CurtEastPoint]

1. I know who he is due to living in Atlanta.

[Aristus]

2. I first heard about Leo Frank back in the 80's because of a TV movie called

"The Murder Of Mary Phagan."

[no_hypocrisy]

7. Found it on youtube

[Sneederbunk]

3. Read The Dead Shall Rise by Steve Oney.

"the only white person in America to be the victim of lynching"? You've got to be kidding.

[Behind the Aegis]

4. Do you know of other white victims of lynchings?

I am asking seriously because Frank is the only one I know of. I know there have been white people murdered because they were white, but lynching is very specific. I know there were Chinese persons in America who were lynched in San Francisco and LA (?).

[Elessar Zappa]

5. I think there was a mass lynching

of 9 Italians in New Orleans in the late 1800s. I’ll go google to confirm.

On edit: On March 14th, 1891, 11 Italians were lynched in New Orleans.

[Behind the Aegis]

8. Thank you.

[Collimator]

9. Ah, but were Italians considered White in 1891?

I'm not asking that to be contrary, and I am not making light of lynching or the long, painful history of racism in this country.

It just amazes and sadly bewilders me that something so supposedly important as being White is such a mutable concept.

I have no confusion that my not-very-olive complexion and European features confers all sorts of default privileges upon me. But I am confused over how some of my relatives can shake their heads in disapproval over historical incidents of discrimination against Italian-Americans and then casually cling to racist notions against Black people.

There is a silly joke that I like to make about not wanting to have my DNA analysed because I want to keep my options open for committing a crime; however, given my family's Sicilian origins, I am well aware that--given that island's history-- any notions of racial "purity" on our part would be utter delusion. Finding out that we have a little or lot of African influence in our genome would be interesting to me; it would be a nightmare for some of my relatives.

[Sneederbunk]

6. Google Lynching in the United States.

[Dysfunctional]

10. Jewish citizens in America are citizens now.

They have been citizens in other countries until they were no longer citizens.