100 years ago today, Leo Frank became the only American Jew to be lynched — setting up KKK’s rebirth

[DonViejo]

Leo Frank was murdered 100 years ago Monday in the only known lynching of an American Jew.

A group of 25 armed men broke into the Georgia State Prison in Milledgeville on Aug. 16, 1915, where they kidnapped Frank — who had been convicted on shaky evidence of murdering a teenage girl who worked at the factory he managed.

Mary Phagan, a 13-year-old who left home three years earlier to find work, was found strangled in the basement of the National Pencil Company — where she had gone on Confederate Memorial Day 1913 to pick up her paycheck.

Frank, who was born in Texas but educated in the North, was quickly identified as a suspect and convicted despite the key witness for the prosecution — a black janitor at the factory — repeatedly changing his testimony and even admitting he made up parts of his story.

Defense attorneys also relied on prejudice to make their case, arguing that janitor John “Conley is a plain, beastly, drunken, filthy, lying n****r with a spreading nose through which probably tons of cocaine have probably been sniffed.”

But ultimately, the dynamics in the rapidly industrializing South, where workers came to resent their Northerner employers, spelled doom for Frank — who was sentenced to death.

more
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/08/100-years-ago-today-leo-frank-became-the-only-american-jew-to-be-lynched-setting-up-kkks-rebirth/

[Behind the Aegis]

1. A little known event.

Anti-Semitism was quite popular then, even in polite society. Not so anymore, at least not in polite society; they adapted.

[Behind the Aegis]

2. His lynching was made into a postcard.

It served as a reminder of what would happen to Northerners, especially Jews, who came to the South.

[moobu2]

6. Postcards featuring lynchings were pretty common

I dont think it was anything specific to Leo Frank. Photographers would photograph lynched bodies and sell them to tourists.

[Behind the Aegis]

7. They were common, but it was meant to send a message, just like the lynchings.

The fact he was a Jew was the specific.

[burrowowl]

3. Lynchings and Cop Killings

should be CRIMES and punished!

[ismnotwasm]

4. Such a horribly sad, ugly history

[ericson00]

5. the Jews are the natural allies of black civil rights,

yet Sharpton and Jackson like to forget that. Thats why I've never warmed to either of them, and I have plenty of more problems with their "leadership" of several big black orgs. I think tho their time is almost up, which will be for the better.

[Little Tich]

8. I just read about Leo Frank in the Jewish Daily Forward.

How the Forverts Reported Leo Frank's Lynching

Source: The Jewish Daily Forward

The following is a translation by Chana Pollack of the Yiddish Forverts coverage of the lynching of Leo Frank on August 17, 1915
Atlanta, August 17, 1915 — A telephone dispatch was received today at 55 minutes past 8 in the morning reporting that Leo Frank was lynched in Marietta (Marietta is the town where the murdered Mary Phagan was from and was buried there.)

No details are known yet.

Atlanta, August 17

Via a telephone report from Lynchburg, Putnam County there is news that Frank’s body was found in the ‘Little River.’

Per the telephone dispatch several bullets were found in Frank’s body. The body was already several hours dead when it was found. The body was found several miles away from the location where Little River meet Further [sic] River.

Another report from Atlanta gives a different account of Frank’s death.

The outlaws hung the victim Frank from a tree. The body was found hanging from the tree in a location found two miles from Marietta.

The site was not far from the house where Mary Phagan was born. His hands were bound.

Read more: http://forward.com/news/319241/how-the-forverts-reported-leo-frank/