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Essay on Leo Frank (1884-1995)
Leo Frank was an American Jew whose execution was a fundamental incident in the evolution of American racial discrimination, anti-Semitism, and the Ku Klux Klan. Frank, the manager of a pencil factory in Atlanta, Georgia, was accused of raping and murdering an employee, twelve-year-old Mary Phagan. Frank was convicted, in spite of confirmation incriminating a janitor at the factory, Jim Conley. The prosecution claimed that Conley only helped Frank dispose of the body, in return for $200. After the trial, further evidence came to light calling Frank's guilt into query. The governor commuted his death sentence to life imprisonment, however Frank was then lynched and killed.
Frank's trial was sensationalized in the media, which promoted far-fetched stories about orgies and rape at the factory. Populist politician and publisher Tom Watson skillfully manipulated the story in order to inflame public opinion, and succeeded in using it to build support for the creation of a new Ku Klux Klan, the original organization having been dormant since Reconstruction due to federal action; a second Klan was founded in 1915 by a group calling itself the Knights of Mary Phagan. Frank's lynching turned the spotlight on anti-Semitism in the United States and led to the founding of the Anti-Defamation League.( Carter, Dan (2005)
On March 12, 1986, the state of Georgia gave a posthumous pardon to Leo Frank. even though many people believed then, as they did in 1915 and as they do now, that Leo Frank did not kill Phagan, Georgia authorities extended a pardon based not upon a reassessment of the confirmation that led to Frank's conviction but upon the state's failure to protect Frank while in custody. The Frank trial was used competently by Watson to work up enthusiasm for rebuilding the Ku Klux Klan, which the federal government had destroyed during Reconstruction......
