Story of Jewish businessman's lynching gets new attention

By YOLANDA RODRÍGUEZ
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 08/14/05

Ninety years ago, some of Marietta's leading citizens gathered to hang a man at what is now Roswell Road and Frey's Gin Court.

In 1915, Leo Frank, a Jewish superintendent of an Atlanta pencil factor, was murdered on a farm belonging to former Cobb County sheriff William Frey. Today, the spot is part of a busy strip in the shadow of I-75, crammed with fast food restaurants and blocks from the Big Chicken.

Andy Sharp/AJC

Rabbi Steve Lebow is near the intersection of Frey's Gin Court and Roswell Road, where Leo Frank was lynched by an angry mob of Mariettans.

Andy Sharp/AJC

Cobb's Jewish community had a plaque placed at the site where Leo Frank, a Jewish man accused of killing Mary Phagan in 1913, was lynched.

Leo Frank

The lynching of Frank, one of the saddest chapters in Marietta's history, will be commemorated Wednesday with prayers and the unveiling of a second plaque were the grisly crime was committed.

"I believe remembering something even though it is evil assures that it is never perpetuated it again," said Rabbi Steve Lebow, spiritual leader of Temple Kol Emeth in east Cobb, who identified the site a decade ago.

In 1995, he placed a plaque on a corner of a brick office building on the property. It reads: "Wrongly accused. Falsely convicted. Wantonly murdered."

This fall, Lebow is planning to file an application with the Georgia Historical Society to have a historic marker placed on the site.

Frank was accused of the 1913 murder of Mary Phagan, a former Mariettan who worked at the National Pencil Factory in Atlanta. Historians believe that the state's main witness, Jim Conley, a janitor at the factory, murdered the 13-year-old girl.

Frank's sensational trial — arguably that era's trial of century — united supporters nationwide and brought out virulent anti-Semitism. In its wake came the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith and the resurgence Ku Klux Klan.

Frank was kidnapped on Aug. 16, 1915, from the state prison in Milledgeville by a group of prominent Mariettans after his death sentence was commuted to life in prison by Georgia Gov. John M. Slaton.

The next morning, the men threw a rope over the branch of an oak tree and tossed its noose over Frank's neck. They kicked a table from beneath his legs and watched as he died. No one was ever prosecuted for his murder.

For much of the 20th century, the subject was taboo in Marietta, even as Jews across the country knew the name Leo Frank.

Articles, books, plays and movies were written about the events. In 1986 the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles gave Frank a posthumous pardon — not because his innocence had been proven, but because the state had failed to protect him.

In the decade since Lebow placed the first marker on the site, Cobb's Jewish population has increased to more than 20,000, settling in east Cobb, home to three temples, he said. Jews have moved into leadership positions in Cobb, among them county chairman Sam Olens and Debra Bernes, who was elected to the Georgia Court of Appeals last year.

Also, since the Frank site was identified, more attention has been focused on the case. In 2000, Stephen Goldfarb posted a list of some of the lynchers online at www.leofranklynchers.com, while he was a research librarian at the Atlanta-Fulton Public Library.

Response to the posting has been mostly positive, said Goldfarb, who is retired.

"I am a historian," Goldfarb said. "I believe more knowledge is better than less knowledge. ... Ironically some of the people wrote to say 'I'm pretty sure my grandfather was involved. Why isn't he on the list?' "

In 2003, the book "And the Dead Shall Rise" by Steve Oney generated more interest in the case.

On Wednesday, Lebow will place a second marker on the building, this one drawn from the fourth chapter of Genesis, after Cain's murder of Abel. God asks Cain where is his brother. Cain asks "Am I my brother's keeper?"

"The answer of course is yes," Lebow said.