American Jews, many of whom vividly recall the lynching of Leo Frank in 1915, greeted with interest today the report that a retired Georgia jurist, Arthur G. Powell, had announced that "after certain persons are dead" he can furnish proof to clear Frank of the charge on which he was convicted, sentenced to prison for life, and which eventually resulted in his lynching.
The Frank case began on April 24, 1913, when the body of 14-year-old Mary Phagan was found in the basement of the pencil factory of which Frank was superintendent. Frank was charged with having attacked and murdered the Phagan girl, and despite much conflicting testimony at his trial, he was convicted.
For two years the case was fought through the Georgia courts and up to the Supreme Court which refused to reverse the decision. American Jewish leaders, such as Louis Marshall, interested themselves in the case. Frank’s original sentence of death was finally commuted by Georgia’s governor, John M. Slaton, to life imprisonment because he had doubts of Frank’s guilt. On the night of August 16, 1915, a band of masked men broke into the State Prison Farm at Milledgeville, carried Frank to Marietta, where Mary Phagan had lived, and hanged him from an oak tree.
Although it was repeatedly denied in Georgia that the fact that Frank was a Jew had any bearing on his arrest and conviction, it was common knowledge that a great deal of the resentment against him was stirred up by anti-Jewish elements. Wild stories were spread that rich Jews in Atlanta, New York and Chicago were conspiring to secure his freedom.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
