Fred Gordon: Phagan-Frank tragedy haunts Georgia

This week marks the 100th anniversary of dark episode in Georgia's history when the legal system was hijacked by vigilantism. In light of current national events, we should remember the Leo Frank case and ensure we can indeed learn from our past mistakes.

Leo Frank was a Cornell-educated businessman who moved to Atlanta to serve as superintendent of the National Pencil Company in the early 1900s. During that time, the South was still struggling from economic stagnation, much of which was linked to Reconstruction. The North dwarfed the South in population and industry. Immigrant waves chose to settle in the big cities like New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago over the predominantly agrarian South, where resentment brewed. The National Pencil Company was viewed as an artificial Northern construct, one which exploited young Southern workers.

A 13-year-old girl, Mary Phagan, went to the National Pencil Company on an ill-fated Southern Confederates Day to pick up her weekly paycheck, which was $1.20. The next morning a watchman discovered the filth-covered body of a girl in the basement of the factory. She had been beaten, strangled and possibly raped.

Frank was the last person to admit to seeing Phagan alive, and was eventually charged with her murder. The idea that a northerner, and a Jew, could have been responsible was tantalizing. The prosecutor's courtroom oration galvanized the frenzied crowds that surrounded the courthouse each day. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes later questioned whether courtroom hostility prevented Frank from receiving a fair trial.

Frank was charged and ultimately convicted in 1913 of murdering Mary Phagan. The presiding judge in the Frank case said that he had doubts about the jury's decision but had no choice but to follow their recommendation, saying "argument and demonstration are worthless against a vicious mob." Frank was sentenced to death.

National media attention and talk of jury prejudice led many to believe that Frank did not receive a fair trial. Then-Gov. John Slaton was one of those doubters. He was not convinced of Frank's guilt, believing it was primarily built on the flimsy and inconsistent testimony of a former convict and janitor named Jim Conley (who would later be accused of the crime). Frank's execution was delayed four times, before Slaton's June 1915 decision to commute Frank's sentence to life imprisonment.

One August evening, a group of people made the 170-mile trip from Atlanta to the state prison in Milledgeville, cut the prison wires, abducted Frank and hanged him in Marietta the next morning. No one was ever charged. Frank's lynching was celebrated and even featured on postcards. Today, those cards can be found on eBay selling for hundreds of dollars.

One of the first places I visited when I moved to Georgia was Frank's lynching site. A simple Google search put it at the cross section of Roswell Street and Frey's Gin Court SE, or about 20 miles from downtown Atlanta. It's easy to miss because it is now a parking lot.

The site is surreal. Its innocuous appearance belies what happened there. In fact, as I walked onto the parking lot, someone (I believe a Jehovah's Witness) came over to explain that the far end of the parking lot was where the oak tree was located, the one from which Leo Frank was hanged.

The tree is no longer there. However, two plaques are. One sign is attached to a building which offers a somber message: "Am I thy brother's keeper?" The second sign stands alone. It is from the state of Georgia, granting Leo Frank a posthumous pardon.

Some people still believe Frank murdered Phagan, even with the 1982 testimony of Alonzo Mann, who stated that as an office boy at the factory, he saw the janitor carrying Mary Phagan's body to the factory basement on the day of her death. He said he was advised by his mother to keep silent.

In the end, the trial and execution of Leo Frank is more than a cautionary tale because it really happened. Mary Phagan's life was cut brutally and tragically short. However, Frank's trial and execution demonstrate what happens when an angry populace tries to take the law into its own hands. As we debate sensitive national issues, let's heed George Santayana's famous quote: "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

Fred Gordon, department chair of Politics, Philosophy and Public Administration at Columbus State University; gordon_frederick@columbusstate.edu.

This story was originally published August 14, 2015 at 12:48 PM with the headline "Fred Gordon: Phagan-Frank tragedy haunts Georgia ."