Exploring America’s White Supremacist origins of Black- Jewish hostility
By Mona Austin
While the story is unfamiliar to many, Jewish American students are taught about what they recognize as the only Jewish lynching in U.S. history – the hanging of Leo Frank. His ghost has hovered over the country’s socio-political divide for over a century. Recently, a climate of anti-Jewish sentiment is re-emerging an so gas a play about Frank’s court case and tragic death. Ben Platt and Michaela Diamond are the stars of a revived Broadway play, “Parade.” It retells the story of the Atlanta-based Jewish man who was accused of the rape and murder of a 13 year old girl, Mary Phagan, an employee at a factory he managed. He was convicted and later commuted after serving time, but still lynched.
Jews claim his lynching is one of the earliest recordings of antisemitism in the United states. Lies, conspiracies, prejudice and racism surrounded the tragic case.
The latent insolence between Blacks and Jews in America may be linked to this trial.
Initial speculation held that Jim Conley, a Black janitor, was either the suspect or Mr. Frank’s accomplice. He became the sole witness in the nationally covered trial although prosecutors had others to call. A Black man’s word being taken over a White man’s added to the complexity of the case. Another Black man, Newt Lee had found the victim’s body. He testified that Frank told him he didn’t think he had killed the girl but that he knew something about the murder indicating Frank and perhaps other Jews might have felt he was being framed and was jailed in place of a Black man. The al0White juty’s decision to send a Jew to jail through the conviving of the sole witness, A Black man,. May not have siginified racial progress between Blacks and the Sothern White Many members of the Nation of Islam believe the exact opposite – that the Black man, perceived as powerless and on the lowest rung of society, was being used as a scapegoat.
Originally from Brooklyn, Frank had a wife and was involved in the local Jewish community.
Newspaper articles said the suspect had an unfair trial due to public influence.
Frank had been found guilty and sentenced to the death penalty. The governor of Georgia, John Slaton had a hunch that the pencil factory supervisor, otherwise known as a family man, was innocent and commuted his sentence to life in prison instead. Detective William Burns agreed. Many Atlantans thought Conley had been set up to take the fall. On the night of August 17, 1915, a mob stormed the jail, took Frank out of his cell, placed a noose around his neck and hung him from a tree in Marietta near where Phagan had lived.
It is said that the KKK re-emerged in the 1920s as the Knights of Mary Phagan in homage to her murder. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) was also founded in an effort to save Frank’s life. Both juxtaposed actions signified the division that was occurring in the Jim Crow South. At the same time some Jews began to identify with the racism Blacks had historically experienced, making this a watershed moment for Black-Jewish relations by some accounts. Others feel the Frank case fueled distrust between the two groups. Throughout the century since the case transpired Blacks and Jews have clashed, such as at the Crown Heights Riots of Brooklyn in 1991. Yet they have also united.
The Jewish American community has long since been committed to eradicating racial hatred in the US by engaging in civil rights. In the modern day antisemitism has returned aggressively and is the focus of the work of the second gentleman of the United states Doug Emhoff, himself a Jew who has engaged with various people in the community and allies to end attacks on Jews.
The death of Leo Frank came to symbolize injustice against Jews and they would like to see a full exoneration, which a descendant named after Mary Phagan opposes. A posthumous pardon was issued in 1986. Like many African Americans who have been lynched no effort was made to hold those who killed him accountable. And the message was the same to Jews as it was to Blacks - White power ruled in Georgia. Frank too was killed as an example of the dominance of White Supremacy over an ethno-religious group. In essence White Supremacists provoked hostility between Jews and Blacks pitting them against each other.
At the Jewish American Heritage Month Celebration at the White House, Pres. Joe Biden said, The venom of antisemitism will not be the story of our times.” The Biden Administration has released a strategy to combat hatred against Jews in America.