Leo Frank

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Lucille and Leo Frank at Frank's trial.

Leo Max Frank (April 17, 1884 – August 17, 1915) was an American man who became the only known Jew in history to be lynched on American soil.^[1][2][3] The manager of a pencil factory in Atlanta, Georgia, Frank was convicted in the rape and murder of a pencil-factory worker, 13-year-old Mary Phagan. The case is widely regarded as having been a miscarriage of justice.^[4] It was the focus of many conflicting cultural pressures, and the jury's conclusion represented in part, class and regional resentment of educated Northern industrialists who were perceived to be wielding too much power in the South, threatening southern culture and morality. ^[5] The trial was sensationalized by the media. The Georgia politician and publisher Tom Watson used the case to build personal political power and support for a revival of the Ku Klux Klan.^[6]

Shortly after Frank's conviction, new evidence emerged that cast doubt on his guilt.^[7]. After the governor commuted his death sentence to life imprisonment, Frank was kidnapped from prison and lynched by a group of prominent citizens who called themselves the "Knights of Mary Phagan".^[8] The group is reported to have included the son of a senator, a former governor, lawyers, and a prosecutor.^[9]

[edit] Early life

Leo Frank and Lucille Selig, 1909, a year before their marriage.

Leo Frank was born in Cuero, Texas, to Rudolf and Rae Frank. His family moved to Brooklyn, New York, shortly after his birth. He was a student at Brooklyn Public Schools and Pratt Institute, and graduated from Cornell University.^[10][11]

Leo Frank earned an engineering degree at Cornell in 1906, and married Lucille Selig in 1910. Lucille came from a wealthy family of industrialists who two generations earlier had founded the first synagogue in Atlanta. An uncle of Frank's was a Confederate veteran who owned a large share of National Pencil Factory. Through that connection, Frank was hired and promoted to factory superintendent. He had traveled to Massachusetts, New York, and Germany for further apprenticeships in pencil manufacturing. He was president of a local chapter of the B'nai Brith. The Franks moved in a cultured and privileged milieu whose leisure pursuits included opera, bridge and tennis.

[edit] Relation to Mary Phagan

Mary Phagan

Mary Phagan had begun working from a young age to support her widowed mother and five siblings.^[12] By age thirteen, Phagan was living in an Atlanta suburb. The week before her murder, a shortage of supplies at the factory had led to a reduction in her hours. Her wages for the week came to $1.20. On April 26, 1913, celebrated locally as Confederate Memorial Day, she came to the factory to claim her pay before going to see the parade. Her pay was issued to her by Frank.

[edit] Murder investigation

One of the 'murder notes.'

At 3:00 a.m. on April 27, the police received a call from the factory's night watchman, Newt Lee, reporting the discovery of a dead girl.

When the police arrived at the factory, they found Phagan's body in a dark, dirty basement. Phagan had been strangled with a 2-cm (3/4-inch) cord, and apparently raped. Some evidence at the crime scene was lost, including bloody fingerprints, and a trail in the dirt along which Phagan had been dragged.

At first Frank said that Lee's time card was complete. It was supposed to be punched every half hour during the watchman's rounds. Later Frank said Lee had not punched the card at three intervals.

The police investigated a variety of suspects, and arrested both Lee and a young friend of Phagan's for the crime. Gradually they became convinced that they were not the culprits. A detective sneaked into Lee's apartment and found a blood-soaked shirt. The prosecution later claimed that the shirt had been planted by Frank in order to incriminate Lee.

Suspicion did not at first fall on Frank. The police later noted that he had not answered the phone when they called his house at 4 a.m., and that he seemed extremely nervous when they forced him to go to the factory with them before dawn. They took his detailed answers on minor points as a sign of suspicion. Frank was trembling so strongly that he could not carry out simple physical tasks. Frank pointed out at the trial that the police had refused to tell him the nature of their investigation when they came to his house and made him accompany them.

The Atlanta Constitution broke the story. Soon there was a frenzied competition for readers between the Constitution and the Georgian, a formerly sedate local paper that had recently been bought by the Hearst syndicate and revamped to compete using the standard Hearst formula of yellow journalism. As many as 40 extra editions came out the day Phagan's murder was reported. The Georgian published a doctored morgue photo of Phagan, in which her head was shown spliced onto the body of another girl.

Some evidence went missing when it was 'borrowed' from the police by reporters. The two papers offered a total of $1,800 in reward money for information leading to the apprehension of the murderer. The reward offer elicited many leads that the police found to be false or irrelevant.

Two notes were found in the plant, supposedly written by Phagan as she was dying and accusing a "Negro" of killing her. These came to be known as the "murder notes". Jim Conley, the plant's black janitor, later claimed that the notes were dictated to him by Frank.

[edit] Suspicion falls on Frank

A newspaper headline trumpeting Frank's guilt.

Phagan's friend, 13-year-old pencil factory worker George Epps, came forward to say that Frank had flirted with Phagan and had frightened her.

The police appeared to intimidate and influence witnesses, such as Nina Formby, the madam of a bordello, and the Franks' housekeeper. They both recanted statements made to the police after they were away from them, Formby indicating the police had "plied her with whisky." ^[13]

Frank hired two Pinkerton detectives to help him prove his innocence. Some observers interpreted this negatively, as the Pinkerton agency had a reputation as the violent enforcers for American industrialists. Frank produced alibis for the entire time during which the crime could have been committed. Suspicion was aroused by the fact that he waited a week to bring forward one crucial witness, Lemmie Quinn, saying that he had forgotten. Gradually, however, the Georgian began to take Frank's side, responding to outrage from Atlanta's Jewish community. Meanwhile, the Constitution continued to criticize the police for their lack of progress.

[edit] Jim Conley

Jim Conley, 1913.

On May 1, Jim Conley, the pencil factory's janitor, was caught by the plant's day watchman, E.F. Holloway, washing a shirt. Conley tried to hide the shirt, then claimed the stains on the shirt were from rust. Conley denied under oath that he had a grade-school education and could read and write. This fact was crucial later with regard to the murder notes. He had a record of drinking and violence and had served a sentence on the chain gang.

The factory foreman Holloway told the Georgian that he believed Conley "strangled Mary Phagan while about half drunk," resulting in a May 28 headline reading "SUSPICION TURNED TO CONLEY; ACCUSED BY FACTORY FOREMAN." Seeing the headline, Conley provided a new story: an agitated Frank, in a dramatic meeting in the dark, made him hide in a wardrobe to avoid being seen by two women, dictated the murder notes to him, gave him cigarettes, and told him to leave the factory. Afterward, Conley went out drinking and saw a movie. Phagan's $1.20 in pay had also disappeared, leading the police to wonder if Conley might have killed her for the money. The police asked Frank to confront Conley. Frank refused because his lawyer was out of town. Even when Rosser returned, no meeting took place.

William Smith, who represented Conley yet, after the trial, declared Conley guilty of the murder. (Dinnerstein, p. 114-115)

Under further pressure from the police about the discrepancies in his story, Conley gave another version. In this account, Frank asked Conley for help in moving Phagan's body and gave Conley $200. When the police asked where the $200 was, Conley said that Frank had taken it back. Conley also said that Frank told him on the day of the murder, "Why should I hang? I have wealthy people in Brooklyn."

The Georgian hired William Smith to be Conley's lawyer and offered to pay his fees. Smith was known for specializing in representing black clients. Although this put Smith at the bottom of the professional totem pole, he had successfully defended a black man against an accusation of rape by a white woman. He had also taken an elderly black woman's civil case as far as the state Supreme Court. Although Smith believed Conley had told the truth in his third affidavit, he became concerned that Conley was giving long jailhouse interviews with crowds of reporters. Smith was concerned about reporters from the Hearst papers, who had taken Frank's side. Smith arranged for Conley to be moved to a different jail. He also severed his own relationship with the Georgian.

Two witnesses came forward to incriminate Conley. Will Green, a carnival worker, said that he had been playing craps at the factory with Conley and had run away when Conley had declared his intention to rob a girl who walked by. William Mincey, an insurance salesman, had met a drunk Conley on the street. He said that Conley, trying to brush Mincey off, said, "I have killed one today and do not wish to kill another." Mincey had thought it was a joke. Neither man testified in court.^[14]

[edit] Trial

The first day of the trial. The area shown in the photo was surrounded by racially segregated seats for spectators. The stenographer can be seen squatting next to Newt Lee, who is being questioned by prosecutor Hugh Dorsey.

On May 24, 1913, a murder indictment was returned against Frank by a grand jury. The grand jury included five Jews and author Lindemann suggests, "they were persuaded by the concrete evidence that [prosecutor] Dorsey presented."^[15] Lindemann notes that none of Conley's testimony was presented to the grand jury and that at criminal trial, Dorsey "explicitly denounced racial anti-Semitism" and "indulged in ... philo-Semitic rhetoric."^[15]

Frank's trial began on July 28. A description and analysis of this trial was given in The Trial of Leo Frank: An Account.^[16] Because of the heat, the windows were left open. In addition to the hundreds of spectators inside, a mob gathered outside the city hall to watch the trial through the windows, a circumstance that became important as a factor in witness and jury intimidation.^[17]

Lead defense lawyer Luther Rosser.

The prosecutor was Hugh M. Dorsey. Frank was represented by eight lawyers (some of them jury selection specialists), led by Luther Rosser. The defense used peremptory challenges to eliminate the only two black jurors.

The prosecution's theory was that Conley's last affidavit was true, Frank was the murderer, and the murder notes had been dictated by Frank in an effort to pin the crime on Lee. The defense's theory was that Conley was the murderer, and that Lee helped Conley write the notes. The defense brought numerous witnesses who attested to Frank's alibi, which did not leave him enough time to have committed the crime.

Prosecutor Hugh Dorsey.

Conley reiterated his testimony from his final affidavit. He added to it by describing Frank as regularly having sex with women in his upstairs office on Saturdays while Conley kept a lookout. Another witness who, like Conley, had a criminal record, testified to the same thing. Although Conley admitted that he had changed his story and lied repeatedly, this did not damage the prosecution's case as much as might have been expected. Conley admitted to being an accessory, so it wasn't surprising that he had lied at first. Also, many white observers did not believe that a black man could have been intelligent enough to make up such a complicated story.

The Georgian said, 'Many people are arguing to themselves that the negro, no matter how hard he tried or how generously he was coached, still never could have framed up a story like the one he told unless there was some foundation in fact.'

Defense witnesses testified that there were too many people in the factory on Saturdays for Frank to have had trysts there. They pointed out that the windows of Frank's office lacked curtains. A large number of female factory workers testified for the defense of Frank's good character when it came to women.

Frank spoke on his own behalf, by making an unsworn statement as allowed by Georgia Code, Section 1036; it did not permit any cross-examination without his consent. Most of his 4-hour speech consisted of an extremely long and detailed analysis of the accounting work he had done the day of Phagan's murder, meant to show that the act was too time-consuming for him to have committed the murder. He ended with a description of how he viewed the crime, including an effective, and by some accounts moving, explanation of his nervousness:

Gentlemen, I was nervous. I was completely unstrung. Imagine yourself called from sound slumber in the early hours of the morning ... To see that little girl on the dawn of womanhood so cruelly murdered — it was a scene that would have melted stone.

In its closing statements, the defense attempted to divert suspicion from Frank to Conley. Lead defense attorney Luther Rosser, said to the jury: "Who is Conley? He is a dirty, filthy, black, drunken, lying, nigger."^[18] Leo Frank himself had issued a widely publicized statement questioning how the "perjured vaporizings of a black brute" could be accepted in testimony against him.^[18]

The prosecutor compared Frank to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He said that Frank had killed Phagan to keep her from talking.

With the sensational coverage, public sentiment in Atlanta turned strongly against Frank. The defense requested a mistrial because it felt the jurors had been intimidated, but the motion was denied. In case of an acquittal, the judge feared for the safety of Frank and his lawyers, so he brokered a deal in which they would not be present when the verdict was read. On August 25, 1913, Frank was convicted of murder.^[19]

The Constitution described the scene as Dorsey emerged from the steps of city hall:

The solicitor reached no farther than the sidewalk. While mounted men rode like Cossacks through the human swarm, three muscular men slung Mr. Dorsey on their shoulders and passed him over the heads of the crowd across the street." ^[20]

Hugh Dorsey was later elected governor of Georgia.

[edit] Appeals

Tom Watson

Frank's appeals to the Georgia Supreme Court failed in November. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Joseph R. Lamar denied a writ of habeas corpus sought by Frank's lawyers, and Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes also denied habeas corpus, although he wrote a short opinion stating that "I very seriously doubt if the petitioner ... has had due process of law ... because of the trial taking place in the presence of a hostile demonstration and seemingly dangerous crowd, thought by the presiding Judge to be ready for violence unless a verdict of guilty was rendered."

Subsequently, Lamar granted a writ of error allowing Frank to appeal to the full U.S. Supreme Court, which heard Frank's appeal in April 1915. On April 19, in the case of Frank v. Mangum Frank's appeal was denied on a 7-2 vote. Holmes and Justice Charles Evans Hughes dissented, with Holmes writing that 'Mob law does not become due process of law by securing the assent of a terrorized jury.'

Populist politician and journalist Tom Watson continued his campaign against Frank. He used the Jeffersonian to write, "If Frank's rich connections keep on lying about this case, SOMETHING BAD WILL HAPPEN."^[21]

[edit] Clemency

Indignation in the press about the commutation of Frank's sentence.

Frank applied for clemency from the departing Governor of Georgia, John M. Slaton. Slaton reviewed more than 10,000 pages of documents and examined new evidence that tended to incriminate Conley, including studies comparing Conley's speech patterns to the language of the murder notes. ^[22]

Convinced that Frank was innocent, on June 20, 1915, Slaton commuted Frank's sentence to life in prison, "assuming that Frank's innocence would eventually be fully established and he would be set free".^[23] "I can endure misconstruction, abuse and condemnation," Slaton said, "but I cannot stand the constant companionship of an accusing conscience which would remind me that I, as governor of Georgia, failed to do what I thought to be right ... It means that I must live in obscurity the rest of my days, but I would rather be plowing in a field than to feel that I had that blood on my hands."^[24]

However, in his written decision, Slaton said of the US Supreme Court opinion that there was "no error of law" in Frank's trial and that "there was sufficient evidence to sustain the [guilty] verdict."^[25] On this latter point, he said the Court had ruled "correctly in my judgement."^[25] Furthermore, Slaton explicitly stated he was "sustaining the jury, the judge, and the appellate tribunals."^[25] His reason for commuting Frank's sentence to life imprisonment was that the Frank verdict fell in that "territory 'beyond a REASONABLE DOUBT and absolute certainty,' for which the law provides in allowing life imprisonment instead of execution."^[25] On the matter of bias against Frank as a Jew, Slaton wrote, "The charge against the State of Georgia of racial prejudice is unfair."^[25]

The commutation was issued six days before the new governor was to take office. According to Steve Oney, "I think Slaton made a decision of conscience... That said, there was a clear and troubling appearance of a conflict of interest." (Slaton was a law partner of Rosser, Frank's lead defense counsel.) ^[26][27] Watson railed against the decision and urged the lynchings of both Frank and Slaton. A mob threatened to attack the governor at home. A detachment of the Georgia National Guard under the command of Major Asa Warren Candler, along with county policemen and a group of Slaton's friends who were sworn in as deputies, dispersed the mob.^[28] Around the same time, a fellow inmate attempted to kill Frank, slashing his throat, but he recovered.

[edit] Lynching

The lynching of Leo Frank.

A group calling itself the "Knights of Mary Phagan" began openly^[29] organizing a plan to kidnap Frank from the state prison farm and take him to Marietta, 240 miles (386 km) away, to lynch him. They recruited between 25 and 28 men with the necessary skills. The ringleaders were:^[9]

• Joseph Mackey Brown, (d. 1932) the former governor who had threatened lynching during the clemency hearings
• Judge Newton (Newt) Morris
• Eugene Herbert Clay, (d. 1923) son of a U.S. senator, Alexander S. Clay, and former mayor of Marietta
• John Tucker Dorsey, a lawyer and state legislator
• Fred Morris, a lawyer
• Bolan Glover Brumby, owner of a furniture factory

Among the participants in Frank's lynching, the Washington Post reported, 'Herbert Clay, son of a U.S. senator,... was perhaps the most prominent person on the list. He was identified as one of the lynching's 'planners,' as were Moultrie McKinney Sessions, a lawyer and banker, and John Tucker Dorsey, a Georgia legislator and prosecutor. Others named as among the lynchers were Gordon Baxter Gann, later mayor of Marietta and a state legislator; ... In all, 26 names were on the list, some of whom may never be adequately identified.'^[30]

Newspaper article after the lynching.

In addition to these leaders, the group also included a doctor, another lawyer, and the former sheriff of Cobb County. John Tucker Dorsey was also the solicitor general for the Blue Ridge Circuit and would theoretically have been in charge of prosecuting the lynchers, none of whom were indicted.

Criticism of the lynching.

On August 17, the Knights of Mary Phagan kidnapped Frank from the prison farm. The kidnapping was highly organized. They forced their way into the prison with a display of their weapons, and took Frank. The lynching site at Frey's Gin, two miles (3 km) west of Marietta, had already been prepared, complete with a rope and table supplied by conspirator Sheriff William Frey. Frank's only requests were that they allow him to write a note to his wife, that they return his wedding ring to his wife, and that they cover his lower body before hanging him, since he was wearing nothing but a nightshirt. Frank's last words were, "I think more of my wife and my mother than I do of my own life."

Frank's body was eventually transferred to an undertaker and buried in the Mount Hebron Cemetery in Flushing New York.

[edit] Aftermath

After Frank's lynching, approximately half of Georgia's 3,000 Jews left the state.^[31] Many American Jews saw Frank as an American Alfred Dreyfus. The intensity of the national and international attention focused on the case was comparable to that in the Lindbergh kidnapping. Frank's arrest and trial led to the founding of the Anti-Defamation League in 1913.^[32]

Southerners who believed Frank was guilty saw similarities between the Frank trial and The Birth of a Nation. ^[33] Watson used sentiments aroused by sensational coverage of the Frank trial to build up power. There was class and sectional resentment against educated northern industrialists for whom many southerners worked in factories. Some members of the lynching mob decided to create a new Ku Klux Klan. The new Klan was inaugurated in 1915 at the top of Stone Mountain, led by William J. Simmons, and attended by a few aging survivors of the original Klan, along with members of the Knights of Mary Phagan. Throughout the south, postcards featuring pictures of the Knights of Mary Phagan posing with pride in front of Frank's dead body were made and sent to friends and relatives. Pieces of cloth from the clothing Frank was wearing when he was murdered were torn off of his body as souvenirs and bought and sold as memorabilia.^[34]

In keeping with fears of rapid social change in America, including the waves of new Catholic and Jewish immigrants from southern and eastern Europe that poured into late 19th and early 20th century United States, the new Klan had an antisemitic, anti-Catholic, and nativist slant. The Klan was able to tap into fears aroused by staggering rates of population growth and industrialization in major cities of the Midwest, such as Detroit, Chicago, and Indianapolis, where the Klan grew rapidly. The Klan also grew in Southern industrializing cities that grew rapidly from 1910-1930, such as Dallas and Houston. In all these cities, neighborhoods changed quickly, people moved from farms into cities for the first time, competition for jobs and housing was fierce, the housing market could not keep up with demand, and competition led to violence among groups struggling for place. After World War I, the Klan also grew as a result of postwar social strains, and the effort to assimilate thousands of veterans in the job market.

In 1982, Alonzo Mann, by then an old man, volunteered that he had seen Jim Conley dragging Mary Phagan's body at the factory. Mann swore in an affidavit that Conley had threatened to kill him if he reported what he had seen. Alonzo Mann died in 1985.

After a 1983 denial of a pardon,^[35] with Mann's testimony the Anti-Defamation League convinced the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles to grant Frank a posthumous pardon. On March 11, 1986, a pardon was issued by the board:

Without attempting to address the question of guilt or innocence, and in recognition of the State's failure to protect the person of Leo M. Frank and thereby preserve his opportunity for continued legal appeal of his conviction, and in recognition of the State's failure to bring his killers to justice, and as an effort to heal old wounds, the State Board of Pardons and Paroles, in compliance with its Constitutional and statutory authority, hereby grants to Leo M. Frank a Pardon.^[36]

Phagan's family continued to insist on Frank's guilt, even after Conley's repeated confessions were revealed. They disassociated themselves from the Klan's use of Phagan's murder to further its own purposes. Mary Phagan's great-niece, also named Mary Phagan, wrote a book about the case in 1987.

[edit] Dramatizations

The Leo Frank story has been explored in various art forms.

Murder in Harlem (1935), by director Oscar Micheaux, was one of three films he made based on events in the Leo Frank trial. He portrayed the character analogous to Frank as guilty and set the film in New York, removing sectional conflict as one of the cultural forces in the trial. In this version the Frank character was instead a "Boston Brahmin". Micheaux's first version was a silent film The Gunsaulus Mystery (1921). Lem Hawkins Confession (1935) was also related to the Leo Frank trial.^[37]

The film They Won't Forget (1937) was inspired by the Frank case, with the Leo Frank character portrayed as a Christian.

After the publication of 1980s testimony by Alonzo Mann, the case was revisited in the 1988 made-for-TV movie, The Murder of Mary Phagan, starring Jack Lemmon, Peter Gallagher, and Kevin Spacey.

David Mamet explored the case in his novel The Old Religion (1997), using it to look at Jewish-American experience and history.

Playwright Alfred Uhry and composer Jason Robert Brown dramatized the Frank story in the musical Parade, produced on Broadway in 1998. It won the 1999 Tony Award for Best Score and Best Book of a Musical. Although it received mixed reviews and had a short run in New York, the production started a national tour in 2000. Uhry, who grew up in Atlanta, had personal knowledge of the Frank story, as his great-uncle owned the pencil factory run by Leo Frank.^[38]

[edit] Memorial

Leaders in the Jewish community worked to have the site of Frank's lynching officially recognized. On March 7, 2008, a historical marker was placed in front of the building at 1200 Roswell Rd in Marietta, near the location where Frank was lynched:

"Rabbis, news crews, local politicians and onlookers attended the unveiling of the marker Friday afternoon. Keynote speakers included Bill Nigut, Southeast Regional Director of the Anti-Defamation League; Cobb [County] Chairman Sam Olens; former Georgia Gov. Roy Barnes; state Senator Steve Thompson; Rabbi Steven Lebow; Georgia Historical Society President Todd Groce; and attorney Dale Schwartz."^[39]

[edit] References

[edit] Bibliography

• James Allen (editor), Hilton Als, Jon Lewis, and Leon F. Litwack, Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America (Twin Palms Pub: 2000) ISBN 0-944092-69-1. Includes photo of the public murder of Leo Frank.
• Leonard Dinnerstein, The Leo Frank Case (Athens, GA, 1987). Dinnerstein is a historian.
• Leonard Dinnerstein, 'The Fate of Leo Frank,' American Heritage 47 (October 1996), pp.98-109.
• Harry Golden, The Lynching of Leo Frank (Cassell & Co. 1966)
• Steve Oney. And the Dead Shall Rise: The Murder of Mary Phagan and the Lynching of Leo Frank. New York: Random House, 2003. According to Publishers Weekly, 'Oney carefully maps the history of the Jewish community in the South; the role that New York newspapers played in publicizing the trial and attacking anti-Semitism; and the complex role that racism and the interactions between black and white Georgians played in Frank's conviction.'
• Mary Phagan. The Murder of Little Mary Phagan. Far Hills, NJ: Horizon Press, 1987. The author, Mary Phagan Kean, is the great-grand niece and namesake of the murder victim.
• Albert S. Lindemann, The Jew Accused: Three Anti-Semitic Affairs (Dreyfus, Beilis, Frank), 1894-1915. Cambridge University Press, 1991.

[edit] Notes

[edit] External links

• "The Leo Frank Case", compiled by Charles Pou, University of Georgia, Carl Vinson Institute of Government
• "Famous Trials: The Leo Frank Trial, 1913", compiled by Douglas O. Linder, University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law.
• The Leo Frank Clemency Application File in the Georgia Archives.
• Frank v. Mangum, 237 U.S. 309 (1915), US Supreme Court decision denying Frank's appeal.
• 'Marietta's Shame: The Lynching of Leo Frank' (from the Atlanta Nation)
• "Letters probe killer's mind: Frank pleads his innocence", Associated Press, The Cincinnati Post, 5 Aug 2002
• 'Leo Frank case' website devoted to analyzing newly found documents.
• Yolanda Rodriguez, "Story of Jewish businessman's lynching gets new attention", Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 14 Aug 2005
• "Movies: About The Murder of Mary Phagan". New York Times. http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/33836/The-Murder-of-Mary-Phagan/overview. Retrieved on 2008-08-08. , 1988 made-for-TV-movie, New York Times
• Luan Gaines, review of Stephen Oney, And the Dead Shall Rise: The Murder of Mary Phagan and Lynching of Leo Frank
• Leo Frank at the Jewish Virtual Library
• Sarah Rachel Egelman, review of David Mamet, The Old Religion, novel about Leo Frank (1999)
• Samuel G. Freedman, "Never Forget", essay on contemporary explorations of Frank case, notes Mamet novel and musical Parade, Salon Magazine, 12 Jan 1999

[edit] Further reading

• Bernstein, Matthew. Screening a Lynching: The Leo Frank Case on Film and Television. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2009).
• Donald E. Wilkes, Jr., Politics, Prejudice, and Perjury (2000)
• Donald E. Wilkes, Jr., Wrongly Accused, Falsely Convicted, Wantonly Murdered(2004).
• Melnick, Jeffrey Paul. Black-Jewish relations on trial: Leo Frank and Jim Conley in the new South. (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2000).