Tragedy in the New South: The Murder of Mary Phagan and the Lynching of Leo Frank

Pardon and Public Opinion

Ku Klux Klan ritual on Stone Mountain, Georgia

Lane Brothers Commercial Photographers (Atlanta, Ga.)

Ku Klux Klan; Crossburning; Meeting; Golfing; Hunting; Stone Mountain.

Courtesy of Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library via Digital Library of Georgia. The contents of this item, including all images and text, are for personal, educational, and non-commercial use only. This item is the property of Georgia State University Library and any user is asked to acknowledge Georgia State University Library. LBCE12-015g, Lane Brothers Commercial Photographers Photographic Collection, 1920-1976. Photographic Collection, Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library.

Georgia State University. Special Collections

<h2>Anti-Defamation League and Ku Klux Klan</h2>
The Leo Frank case catalyzed significant growth of several sociopolitical organizations of the day, including both advocates for and against racial violence. The first of these was the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith (ADL), founded in 1913 by Sigmund Livingston, a Chicago attorney—the  same year as the Leo Frank trial. Although the creation of the ADL preceded the Leo Frank case, Frank’s experience bolstered Livingston’s belief that American Jews needed an organization that would challenge American anti-Semitism. The ADL remains an influential civil rights organization.
The second was the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), which was revived in Georgia at the end of the Frank case. Originally founded after the end of the Civil War, the KKK had been shut down by federal intervention during Reconstruction. Inflammatory editorials penned by Thomas Watson soon after Frank’s lynching incentivized the newly formed Klan, who burned a cross on top of Stone Mountain on Thanksgiving Day, 1915, to signify the organization’s rebirth. Several members of Leo Frank’s lynching party were also charter members of the new Klan.
The Klan’s white supremacist, anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic, and anti-immigration platform secured political influence in Georgia and nationwide—the KKK reached an estimated membership of five million people by the mid-1920s. Internal feuding and the exposure of Klan violence by journalists who infiltrated the organization eventually led to a steep decline in the group’s political influence by the late 1940s.

William J. Simmons, Organizer of KKK Rebirth

Image of William J. Simmons, seated during a 1921 investigation of the Ku Klux Klan by a U.S. House of Representatives committee. He faces front, and several men sit in the background. Simmons was inspired to reestablish the Klan in 1915 after seeing D. W. Griffith's film, The Birth of a Nation, and learning about the Leo Frank trial in Atlanta, Georgia.

Courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Library of Congress. Prints and Photographs Division

Courtesy of the University of Michigan via HathiTrust. Public domain. Learn more at http://www.hathitrust.org/access_use

Pages from an address from Sigmund Livingston delivered as a message to the supreme convention of B'nai B'rith in session at Washington, D.C., May 9, 1938.

Legacy

Setting: Atlanta in 1913

Crime and Trial

Sentence, Appeals, Commutation, Lynching

In this letter, Oscar Elsas attempts to persuade Judge Richard Sloss that the hearings held by the Commission on Industrial Relations not be swayed by public prejudice due the the Leo Frank case or misrepresentation of facts by labor organizers.

Courtesy of Archives, Library and Information Center, Georgia Institute of Technology via Digital Library of Georgia. Please cite: 6 Commission on Industrial Relations (folder 2 of 4) 1915; Letter from Oscar Elsas to Richard Sloss, 1915 March 18, ms004-066, Fulton Bag and Cotton Mills records, Archives, Library and Information Center, Georgia Institute of Technology.

Georgia Institute of Technology. Library and Information Center. Digital InitiativesGeorgia Institute of Technology. Library and Information Center. Archives and Records Management

Leo Frank’s lynching terrorized Georgia’s Jewish communities. Atlanta Jews, who had worked hard to assimilate into Southern society since establishing themselves prior to the Civil War, were now convinced that they were not safe from anti-Semitism. Many withdrew from public life, and Jewish leaders were pressured to appear conciliatory so as not to arouse hostility. No Jewish candidates ran for public office in Atlanta for twenty years; some Jews felt it necessary to leave the South altogether.
By the mid-1940s, Atlanta’s Jewish leaders emerged with more outspoken views. Jacob Rothschild was rabbi at Atlanta’s oldest synagogue, the Hebrew Benevolent Congregation, also known as “the Temple.” Rothschild openly criticized segregation, and publicly supported the civil rights work of Martin Luther King, Jr. His outspokenness was challenged violently when the Temple was bombed by white supremacists in 1958. This time, however, Atlanta rallied to support its Jewish community. Led by Mayor William B. Hartsfield and Atlanta Constitution editor Ralph McGill, Atlantans immediately condemned the incident and campaigned to rebuild the Temple.
During this time, the Southern Israelite, which began as a Temple bulletin, expanded into a monthly newspaper. It ultimately began circulating statewide and throughout the South, and was a leading Jewish publication.

Martin Luther King, Jr. and Jacob Rothschild at the Nobel Peace Prize recognition dinner, National Conference of Christians and Jews, Dinkler Plaza Hotel, Atlanta, Georgia, January 27, 1965

Lane Brothers Commercial Photographers (Atlanta, Ga.); Lane, W. C. (William Cox), Jr., 1912-1970; National Conference of Christians and Jews

National Conference of Christians Martin Luther King dinner, Jan. 27, 1965.

Courtesy of Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library via Digital Library of Georgia. The contents of this item, including all images and text, are for personal, educational, and non-commercial use only. This item is the property of Georgia State University Library, and any user is asked to acknowledge Georgia State University Library. LBSCB12-120uuu, Lane Brothers Commercial Photographers Photographic Collection, 1920-1976. Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library.

Georgia State University. Libraries. Special Collections

Digital Library of Georgia

Courtesy of the Cuba Family Archives for Southern Jewish History at the William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum via Digital Library of Georgia. For use of images from the Southern Israelite, contact the William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum.

Front Page of Southern Israelite, Sep. 20, 1929. Rabbi H. Cerf Straus established the Southern Israelite as a temple bulletin in Augusta in 1925. The publication was so popular, he expanded it into a monthly newspaper. Later in the decade, Straus sold the paper to Herman Dessauer and Sara B. Simmons, who moved the paper to Atlanta, where it began circulating state-wide and eventually throughout the South. In 1930, M. Stephen Schiffer, a former employee of the Atlanta Georgian, took over as sole owner of the Southern Israelite. Even in these earliest years, the paper not only covered the news of the southern Jewry, but also the issues that involved Jewish populations throughout the nation and world, including the Holocaust and later the creation of the Jewish state of Israel. In October of 1934, the Southern Israelite began publishing a four page weekly edition, supplemented by its established monthly magazine edition. Ownership of the paper was turned over to a corporation headed by Israelite editor Adolph Rosenberg in 1951, while the paper continued its mission as the voice of the Jewish community in Atlanta. In October of 1958, the paper was at the forefront of the coverage of the Temple bombing in Atlanta, giving its readers a unique first hand perspective. The monthly edition of the paper was discontinued in 1973 in favor of its increasingly growing weekly edition. In 1987, the paper changed its name from the Southern Israelite to the Atlanta Jewish Times and guaranteed at least thirty-two page issues moving forward. The paper is today owned by Jewish Renaissance Media and continues as a weekly publication with a readership of over 25,000.

This photograph shows Atlanta, Georgia mayor William Hartsfield (left) and Jacob Rothschild, rabbi of the Hebrew Benevolent Congregation in Atlanta, examining rubble on October 13, 1958, the day after the bombing of the congregation's synagogue, known as "the Temple." They crouch in front of a hole that has been blown in the side of the structure. Debris is piled around the building. The Temple was bombed on October 12, 1958, probably in response to the civil rights activism of Rabbi Rothschild.

Courtesy of The Atlanta Journal Constitution Photographic Archives. Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library via Digital Library of Georgia. Reprinted with permission from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Atlanta, Ga.)

Tragedy in the New South: The Murder of Mary Phagan and the Lynching of Leo Frank

Atlanta's Jewish Community

Atlanta's Jewish Community