On Anniversary of Lynching, Jewish Congregations Hold Remembrance

[NNN0LHI]

http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGBQWDUWHCE.html

MARIETTA, Ga. (AP) - Jewish congregations gathered in a suburban shopping center Wednesday to remember the lynching of a Jewish businessman on the same spot 90 years ago.

Leo Frank was kidnapped from prison and hanged in 1915 after being convicted of killing a teenage girl at a pencil factory. Frank, a 29-year-old from New York City, had been sentenced to death for the 1913 strangulation of Mary Phagan, a 13-year-old worker whose body was found in the factory's coal bin.

But the evidence against Frank was thin, and the governor commuted the sentence to life in prison.

Two months later, a group of about 30 men kidnapped Frank from prison, drove him 175 miles back to Marietta and hanged him from an oak tree.

[Up2Late]

1. Thank You for posting this. I just heard this reported on Local News...

...on NPR.

I've now lived near Marietta for 10 years now and the Atlanta Metro area for 21 years (more than half of my life) and had never heard about this crime.

Obviously, not something that the locals are too proud of or care to talk much about.

[CottonBear]

2. This story has been covered quite a bit in the AJC over the last 20 years.

It is part of history and is still discussed today.

[Up2Late]

3. I've never really been a fan of the AJC, and the Marietta Journal...,

...hard to even call it a News Paper. Creative Loafing is better.

[alcibiades_mystery]

4. The lynchers were and continued to be Marietta society

There's a "Brumby Elementary School" in Marietta. A Brumby was one of the key conspirators in the lynching.

That said, I've read quite a bit on this, and there's a good chance that Frank was, in fact, involved in Mary Phagan's murder. not enough to convict, but still. The main issue of the lynchers wasn't the murder, though. It was the northern "meddling" in the state trials and aftermath. They were defending the sacred South against all northern judgment. Leo Frank's case was a cause celebre across the country at the time.

[Behind the Aegis]

5. This almost sounds like an excuse for the murder of Frank.

[alcibiades_mystery]

6. Does it almost, now?

It's the fucking history of the thing. The way we learned it in school was oversimplified: bad people lynch northern Jewish factory manager because he's Jewish. Yes, that's patrt of it, but a small part. Go read Steve Oney's excellent And the Dead Shall Rise: The Murder of Mary Phagan and the Lynching of Leo Frank for a much more complex and in-depth study of the case. Nobody's making excuses for anything here. The history of these events just happens to be a lot more complex and interesting than the mythical cultural narrative.

[H5N1]

7. Leo Frank may have been guilty?

First time I have heard that.
I have only seen the movie, where he
is portraited as completely innocent.

[alcibiades_mystery]

8. In all probability, he was innocent

But there is evidence to suggest that he knew more than he was saying, and some lements of his alibi don't really wash.

[Up2Late]

9. What was the Movie called?

I'm amazed at how little of this I've ever heard.:shrug: