Atlanta Jewish Community Feels Justice Was Done in the Exoneration of a Jewish Lynching Victim

The Jewish community here was unanimous in expressing the feeling that justice has prevailed in the disclosure last week that a Jew who was lynched nearly 70 years ago was not guilty of the crime for which he was found guilty and subsequently murdered, by a frenzied mob.

Leo Frank, a supervisor of a local pencil company, was convicted in 1913 of killing a 14-year-old girl, Mory Phagan, who worked at the factory. But last week, Jerry Thompson and Bob Sherbome, reporters for the Nashville Tennessean, broke the story that Phagan had been killed by the janitor of the factory, Jim Conley. This information was provided by 83-year-old Alonzo Mann, who at the time of the girl’s murder was an office boy at the pencil company.

Thompson, who earlier had infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan for 16 months and later wrote an inside account of KKK activities for the Tennessean, and Sherbome spent more than six weeks on the Frank story, often working 20 to 22 hours a day.

WANT TO SEE FRANK CLEARED OFFICIALLY

Vida Goldgar, editor of The Southern Israelite, wrote in this week’s edition of the newspaper that the Jewish community here would like to see Frank’s name cleaned on the official record in view of Mann’s disclosure.

Ted Fischer, chairman of the Atlanta Jewish Federation’s Community Relations Committee’s steering committee, said that even after 70 years, “it is of vital interest to the Jewish community that an atmosphere of cooperation and justice prevail and that in a case such as this, where new and important information has been received, it should be given due consideration because such information allows us to build a better society with justice for all,” Ms. Goldgar reported.

She wrote that the committee, responding to the broad interests and concerns which have been expressed within the Jewish community, is formulating plans to attempt to set the record straight for both the Jewish and general communities.

THE MOST MALICIOUS VILLAIN

Stuart Lewengrub, the regional director of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith was quoted by Ms. Goldgar as saying: “I still believe that of all the villains in this tragedy, the one who was most malicious and bears the greatest responsibility for the (court) verdict and the lynching was Tom Watson. And it is a shame that his statue is so prominently displayed at the capital. It is a monument to the kind of racial and religious bigotry which hopefully is a thing of the past.”

Watson, through his publication, the Jeffersonion, “played on the fears, hatreds and prejudices to bring about the frenzy of anti-Semitism” that swept through this city following the murder of Phagan, Ms. Goldgar wrote.

Sherry Frank, director of the American Jewish Committee chapter here, said she was “relieved that this historic injustice is being rectified.” She added that the Nashville Tennessea’s “endless pursuit off truth” challenges “leaders throughout our state to clear Leo Frank’s name once and for all.” Rabbi Alvin Sugarman of the Temple, of which Leo Frank’s uncle. Moses Frank, had been a founder, was quoted by Ms. Goldgar as saying: “Even though it is years late in coming, Mann has come forward and shown his worth as a human being … he has chosen not to go to his grave holding back something that works for justice, namely, the truth.”

‘AN INNOCENT MAN WAS LYNCHED’

In their first public appearance since breaking the story, last week in a 10-page special news section under the headline, “An Innocent Man Was Lynched,” reporters Thompson and Sherbome recounted details of their investigation at a meeting of the AJCommittee Atlanta chopter.

Thompson explained that the story was significant to a newspaper in Nashville, for removed from Atlanta, because a number of events were shoped by the tragedy: the rise of the KKK; the formation of the ADL; Hugh Dorsey, the prosecutor of Leo Frank, went on to become governor of Georgia; and Watson’s political power increased and he rode the wave to a seat in the U.S. Senate.

From the tragedy, Thompson continued, the political career of Governor John Slaton, who commuted Frank’s sentence, was sacrified and he was driven from Atlanta for many years. Thompson likened the mob which marched on the governor’s mansion after he commuted Frank’s sentence to pictures he has seen of Kristallnachi in Nazi Germany, Ms, Goldgar reported.

It was also recalled that it was the AJCommittee’s first president, renowned Constitutional lawyer Louis Marshall, who provided both funds and legal advice in the ultimately futile efforts to prove Frank’s innocence. Thompson and Sherborne said that what matters most is that “once and for all it (Mann’s disclosure) confirms what many people have believed for almost 70 years” — that an innocent man was lynched.