Leo Frank: Pentagon Official Reignites Firestorm Around Century-Old Georgia Murder Case 

The infamous Leo Frank lynching is back in the news – this time because Kingsley Wilson, deputy press secretary to the Pentagon, tweeted antisemitic conspiracy theories about the case. 

“Leo Frank raped & murdered a 13-year-old girl,” Wilson tweeted. “he also tried to frame a Black man for the crime. The ADL [Anti-Defamation League] turned off the comments because they want to gaslight you.”  

For the unfamiliar: Leo Frank, a wealthy, Jewish man from New York who ran a pencil factory in Atlanta, was accused of raping and murdering Mary Phagan, a 13-year-old factory employee from Marietta, when she came to pick up her paycheck on Confederate Memorial Day, 1913. 

Frank was convicted in an openly antisemitic sham-trial based on shoddy evidence, much of which was provided by Jim Conley, the factory janitor who, historians agree, was almost certainly the actual perpetrator of the crime. He was sentenced to death, though that sentence was commuted to life imprisonment by Georgia Governor John M. Slaton, who believed Frank to be innocent and wanted to buy him time to pursue appeals. The mob violence that followed caused Slaton to flee the state, and Frank was abducted from prison and lynched by some of Georgia’s most prominent citizens in 1915. 

Despite a mob being present, photos being taken, and souvenir postcards being made of the lynch party surrounding Frank’s body, no one was ever prosecuted for the lynching. 

If you live in Marietta, specifically, or the greater Atlanta area generally, you’ve likely heard of the Frank case. Some learned of it in history class. Others came across “And The Dead Shall Rise: The Murder of Mary Phagan and the Lynching of Leo Frank,” a masterclass in trial coverage, penned by local author Steve Oney. Still others may know of the case from the Tony Award-Winning Broadway Musical, “Parade,” written by Atlanta’s-own Alfred Uhry of “Driving Miss Daisy” fame. 

In 2023, “Parade” was picketed by Neo-Nazis and antisemites, who chanted the very same talking points Wilson tweeted. 

So what is it about this case that keeps it in today’s headlines? 

Sure, it was deemed the “Trial of the Century” in its day, and the trial, conviction, and subsequent lynching are decried by historians and judicial experts as a grotesque consequence of antisemitic sentiment and mob violence in the South. 

But these events took place more than 100 years ago. 

Why do we still care? 

Well, the answers to that question are myriad, but they all boil down to this: the consequences of this case still reverberate. 

For starters, the case and its aftermath launched two organizations that today’s audiences are sure to recognize: the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and theAnti-Defamation League (ADL). 

In the nearly 50 years since the Civil War, the KKK in Georgia had dwindled to damn-near defunct by 1913. But, buoyed by the belief that a poor, white, Christian girl had been raped and murdered by a lecherous, wealthy, Yankee Jew, the Klan went on the offensive, recruiting membership and support at an alarming rate. Calling themselves the “Knights of Mary Phagan,” the reinvigorated Klan donned their white robes and ascended Stone Mountain to burn a cross that could be seen for miles – a terrifying omen of the decades of racial prejudice, hatred, and violence to come. 

Fearing for their lives, half of Georgia’s Jewry fled the state. 

To this day, Klansmen and Neo Nazis run websites dedicated to declaring Frank’s guilt. And they still leave tokens at poor Mary Phagan’s grave, which rests in Marietta City Cemetery. 

Conversely, those who were appalled by the kangaroo court that convicted Frank sought their own way to secure justice. Among them was Chicago attorney Sigmund Livingston, who founded the ADL in 1913 “with the mission to stop the defamation of the Jewish people and secure justice and fair treatment for all.”

This is the same ADL that Wilson and the Neo-Nazis that picketed “Parade” decry. 

And it doesn’t help that the State of Georgia has done little to set the record straight.

At the time of the trial and in the years following, Conley admitted to several people in his circle that he was the one who raped and murdered Phagan, and, in the 1980s, a former factory worker named Alonzo Mann made a deathbed confession that he had seen Conley commit the crime. Mann had been a young boy when he worked at the factory, and Conley threatened to murder Mann as well if he ever spoke out. 

By the time Mann found the courage, it was too late. Both Frank and Conley were already dead. 

There’s mountains of other evidence that proves – to the degree that such a thing can be proved so many years after the fact – that Frank was innocent of the crimes of which he was accused. But, despite the preponderance of the evidence and the undeniability of the role that antisemitism played in the Frank verdict, the State of Georgia has yet to unequivocally declare his innocence. 

The State also refuses to name his murderers, which, according to Oney’s research, include Joseph Mackey Brown, former governor of Georgia; Eugene Herbert Clay, former mayor of Marietta and president of the Georgia Senate; E. P. Dobbs, mayor of Marietta at the time; Moultrie McKinney Sessions, lawyer and banker; members of the Marietta delegation at Governor John M. Slaton’s clemency hearing, and several Cobb County sheriffs.

Mann’s testimony secured Frank a posthumous pardon in 1986, but even the pardon refuses to absolve Frank, saying only that the State failed to protect Frank or bring his killers to justice. Phagan, likewise, never received justice, as her true killer only received a year in jail for his role in her rape and murder. 

Because of this, the spectre of the Frank case hangs heavy on Georgia’s head. 

It lives on in archives like Oney’s and in art, like “Parade.” And it lives on in the hearts and minds of the antisemites who refuse the research and picket the art. 

It lives on in libelous tweets by the mouthpieces of our Nation’s leadership. 

It lives on in the lives of Jews, who are currently seeing a shocking rise in antisemitism; antisemitic attacks have risen 360% in recent years, according to the ADL. 

And it lives on in the actions of many, many advocates who are trying to set the record straight on our painful past. On Roswell Road in Marietta, a small, granite memorial stands. Funded by multiple groups including the ADL and the Jewish Society For Historic Preservation, the memorial reads: 

In respectful memory of the thousands across America, denied justice by lynching: Victims of hatred, prejudice and ignorance. 

Between 1880 – 1946, 
~ 570 Georgians were lynched.

The memorial stands on the site of the Frank lynching. 

“Parade” will run at The Fox Theatre in Atlanta April 1 – 6.  

Note: This is an opinion article as designated by the the category placement on this website. It is not news coverage. If this disclaimer is funny to you, it isn’t aimed at you — but some of your friends and neighbors honestly have trouble telling the difference.