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Teaching the Holocaust and other Genocides

1913

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Leo Frank Case Study 
 

The trial of the "Jew" Leo Frank, for the murder of "little Mary Phagan" pitted Jews against Christians, industrialists against workers, northerners against southerners, and city against country folk. It launched political careers and destroyed others, prompted the formation of the Anti-Defamation League, and set the stage for the resurrection of a more sinister and brutal Ku Klux Klan. 

Newspaper Headline for Leo Frank Case

Leo Max Frank was arrested on April 27, 1913, the morning after Confederate Memorial Day. A grotesquely engineered trial led to Frank's conviction and a sentence of death by hanging. After Governor John Slaton's commutation of the death sentence, Frank was transferred for his own safety to a prison farm in Milledgeville, Georgia. On the night of August 16, 1915, at 11 p.m. a gang of twenty-five men wearing goggles and hats pulled low, some of Marietta, Georgia's "best citizens," pulled Frank from his hospital bed where he had been recovering from a near fatal seven-inch knife wound to his throat. They placed him, feeble, undressed, and handcuffed, in one of four waiting cars and departed for Marietta, intending to hang him over the monument of Mary Phagan. Frank, often described as stoic, sufficiently impressed two of the lynchers with his sincerity and innocence and they advocated his return to the prison farm. The mob, minus the few who "mutinied" drove into a grove just outside Marietta, selected a mature oak and swung the rope over a limb, stood Frank on a table and kicked it out from beneath him. 

Postcards of the lynched Leo Frank were sold outside the undertaking establishment where his corpse was taken, at retail provisions, and by mail order for years. The owner of the property where the lynching occurred refused repeated offers to buy the tree from which Leo Frank was hung. The dean of the Atlanta Theological Seminary praised the murderers as "a sifted band of men, sober, intelligent, of established good name and character - good American citizens." The mob included two former Superior Court justices, one ex-sheriff, and at least one clergyman. 

https://withoutsanctuary.org/pics_30_text.html

Leo Frank was posthumously pardoned in 1985.

Discussion Questions 

  1. Who was Leo Frank, and what was he accused of? 

  1. How did the trial of Leo Frank reflect the tensions between different social, religious, and regional groups in the United States at the time? 

  1. What does the commutation of Frank’s sentence by Governor John Slaton suggest about the justice system and political pressures of the time? 

  1. Why might some members of the lynch mob have had a change of heart about executing Frank? 

  1. What does the sale of postcards featuring Leo Frank’s lynching indicate about the cultural and societal attitudes of that period? 

  1. How did the events surrounding Leo Frank’s trial and lynching contribute to the formation of the Anti-Defamation League? 

  1. What does the involvement of prominent citizens, including former judges and a clergyman, in the lynching suggest about the nature of vigilante justice in early 20th-century America? 

  1. How does the praise given to the lynch mob by a theological seminary dean reflect the intersection of religion and racial or ethnic prejudices during that era? 

  1. In what ways did the Leo Frank case set the stage for the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan? 

  1. What role did media and public perception play in shaping the outcome of the trial and its aftermath? 

 

 

Sources  

https://www.adl.org/sites/default/files/people-v-leo-frank-teachers-guide-the.pdf 

https://withoutsanctuary.org/pics_30_text.html