101 years later

Though the case occurred over 100 years ago, its legacy continues to permeate the city of Marietta and its surroundings.

In the early 2000s, an undisclosed source and Steve Oney’s book, And the Dead Shall Rise: The Murder of Mary Phagan and the Lynching of Leo Frank, created a list of the men involved in the lynching group, which includes prominent families of Marietta that still reside in the town today. The list, though shocking for the families involved, brought together a new avenue for speech about the issue.

“There are significant prominent families that are still here in Cobb County today that were involved in the lynching and up until the late 1990s, people didn’t know who the lynch mob was and people didn’t talk about it,” Hughes said. “As a result of the book, everybody, including those whose ancestors were on either side, all came together and it’s been this wonderful dialogue about what the whole trial means.”

The spot of the murder, 37-41 Forsyth Street in Atlanta, now houses the Sam Nunn Federal Center.

In addition to B’nai B’rith’s Anti-Defamation League, the case serves as an important event in American Jewish history. At the site of the lynching, 1200 Roswell Drive — not even a mile down the road from the Big Chicken —, Rabbi Steve Lebow of Temple Kol Emeth helped to erect two plaques, one in 1995 and one in 2005. The city tore down building the plaques hung on, and removed the historical marker on the spot for construction in 2014. According to the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT), the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation, the Georgia Historical Society, and the GDOT will work to find a renewed location for the marker. Since 2014, the department has made no mention of a replacement location.

On the 100th anniversary of the lynching in 1915, Congregation Etz Chaim, Congregation Ner Tamid, and Temple Kol Emeth held commemoration services for Frank. Congregation Etz Chaim planted a commemorative tree as well.

“Our hope and fervent prayer is that Leo Frank did not die in vain. His memory will live on when future generations view his grave-marker, and they appreciate the shade and magnificence of the natural beauty of the oak tree planted today,” Rabbi Shalom Lewis said.

The case itself also inspired pop culture from 1915 to now. Marietta native Fiddlin’ John Carson wrote the song “Little Mary Phagan” which he performed at the state capitol in protest of Frank’s commutation. It also inspired the 1937 film They Won’t Forget based on a  fictionalized account of the case, a 1988 television mini-series called The Murder of Mary Phagan, a 1977 novel, Members of the Tribe by Richard Kluger, with a reconstruction of the case set in Savannah, David Mamet’s 1997 novel Old Religion, a fictionalized first-person point of view from Frank, and Alfred Uhry’s 1999 Broadway musical Parade.

“When I was growing up in Atlanta in the 1940s and 1950s, Leo Frank was mentioned only in hushed tones,” Uhry said. “I remember people getting up and walking out of the room if anyone talked about the case. Why? I think it was some sort of toxic combo of shock, horror and embarrassment. When one of my family’s own (albeit a New Yorker) married into one of the ‘good’ families, and became the focus of rabid anti-Semitism, it was a brutal slap in the face.”

The Chant used Google’s NGram viewer to compile all of the usages of the terms “Leo Frank” and “Mary Phagan” in books since before 1860. The y-axis shows the percentage of Google’s book records containing the search terms. Though not accounting for an overwhelming amount of their records, the two names have seen multiple spikes in popularity as authors publish more books and research.

Atlanta’s William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum opened a special exhibition called Seeking Justice: The Leo Frank Case Revisited that Kennesaw’s Southern Museum of Civil War and Locomotive History displayed in 2015. Hughes and the museum’s Executive Director Richard Banz immediately jumped on the chance to connect the local history to the exhibit.

“I have a concept where I don’t believe in museums,” Hughes said. “Museums present history in a stagnant way. I believe in do-seums. You go through the museum, learn what you can from it, and you say ‘what am I going to do with this?’”

The exhibit showcased an exact replica of Frank’s desk, Mary Phagan’s childhood dress, photos breaking down Atlanta according to class divisions, the door of the Milledgeville prison, and more.

“You go through this exhibit and go ‘wow this sounds a lot like today.’ Then they have this photo of his lynching and as you stand, they actually have a silhouette cutout so that you’re a part of the crowd and it makes you think if you would have said anything,” Hughes said.