"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing."

- Simon Wiesenthal

THE SETTING

  • The Civil War ended in 1865 with the defeat of the Confederacy by the Union. Much of the South, including Georgia, was left in chaos – with a currency which was worthless, railroad tracks destroyed, a significant number of white males killed or injured, severe shortages of food, communities rife with crime and representatives of the federal government who were unethical and corrupt.

    Parade depicts the story of the trial of Leo Frank, which captured moral attention and caused significant shifts in the political narrative and values of early 20th Century America. It’s a story of heartbreak, tragedy, and triumph, amidst a setting of antisemitism, racism, and long-standing conservative values based on ignorance and affluence.

    In Atlanta in 1906, a culmination of spiralling events since the end of the Civil War in 1865 lead to one of the biggest race riots and massacres in the city's history. Following the utter devastation, decimation and subsequent reconstruction of industry and economy in Georgia after the war's conclusion, political schemes combined with tenacious racism and anti-semitism aimed to let the values of the old south continue. The powder-keg ignited when local newspapers made unsubstantiated claims about four counts of black men assaulting white women, and after this was published, thousands of local white men converged on downtown Atlanta, carrying weapons and seeking vigilante punishment of those they perceived to be the enemy.

    All of this would later be mirrored in the treatment and trial of Leo Frank, a Jewish factory worker originally from Brooklyn, NY. As a new resident in Atlanta, Leo and his wife Lucille were up against the ideals and politics of the conservative south, as were many of the city's Jewish residents.

    In 1913, Leo was accused of murdering Mary Phagan, a 14 year old worker at the same factory he was employed as a supervisor.

    What ensued was a complex, high-profile trial, involving cover-ups, character assassinations, lies, racism, and convoluted theories about who was capable of committing the murder.

    Parade is a musical depiction of real life events that give its audience reason to reflect on key issues of class, race, and religious values that still persist today…

  • On September 22, 1906, the city of Atlanta became the focus of the problems which accrued with the changes in the New South. Over a period of days, white citizens took to the streets, killing and wounding their black neighbors and destroying property. Although accounts conflict regarding the numbers of dead and injured, by the riot’s end, it became clear that this event was a benchmark which altered the ways that black and white residents of Atlanta viewed themselves and their relationships.

    The loss of the Civil War and the conflicts which resulted from the period of Reconstruction created ongoing tensions between the black and white communities.

    Tensions were further exacerbated by the existence of many Jewish-owned saloons on Decatur Street in Atlanta which were frequented primarily by black patrons.

  • Nativism began to permeate Atlanta society in the early twentieth century. German Jews, many of whom were among the city’s pioneer families and had fought for the Confederacy, were alarmed by the arrival of large numbers of Russian Jews. Although they were concerned for the welfare of their Russian co-religionists, German Jews were effectively segregated from this group by differences in religious observance and economic circumstances. The German Jews and Russian Jews often lived in separate communities. Many of the Russian newcomers had not yet mastered English, dressed differently from their German Jewish and gentile neighbors and continued traditions they had pursued in their Eastern European homelands. As a consequence, Jewish social and communal organizations in Atlanta were divided. Separate synagogues, cemeteries and country clubs were designated for German or Russian Jews. In spite of these internal divisions in the Jewish community, many non-Jewish Atlantans tended to view the Jewish population as a single entity.

    Jews of all backgrounds increasingly became associated with the evils of industrialization. Jewish management of a number of saloons and pawn shops on and near Decatur Street, and the Jewish ownership of some of Atlanta’s largest mills and factories seemed to reinforce these views. It was in the context of these tensions within and without the Jewish community of Atlanta, and the growth of anti-immigration sentiment in the United States that the case against Leo Frank was made.

  • Leo Frank

    Leo Frank, the son of Rudolph and Rachel Frank, was born in Cuero, Texas on April 17, 1884. The family moved to Brooklyn, New York shortly thereafter. His family was Jewish. Leo Frank completed his public school education and in 1906 got a degree in mechanical engineering from Cornell University. He held jobs in Massachusetts and New York, but then moved to Atlanta at the request of his uncle, to help run the National Pencil Company. In 1910 Leo Frank married Lucille Selig and the newly married couple moved in with Lucille’s family.

    On April 29, 1913, three days after Mary Phagan’s death at the factory where he worked, Leo Frank was brought in by police for questioning. He was held over for trial, where he was found guilty of her murder and sentenced to hang. After all appeals were exhausted, Governor John Slaton of Georgia commuted Leo Frank’s sentence to life imprisonment.

  • Lucille Frank

    Lucille Selig, an Atlanta native, was born in February of 1888, the youngest of three daughters. Lucille “Lucy” Selig was part of the socially active and highly assimilated German-Jewish community of Georgia. She was considered very much Southern and “sassy.” Despite being from a well-to-do and prominent Jewish family, she was very provincial compared to Leo Frank. Leo Frank was a New Yorker, everyone from outside of “the city” was considered, to some extent, provincial and unsophisticated at the time.

    The Selig family was active in Atlanta’s Jewish society life, philanthropy, and the Reform Synagogue of the Rabbi Dr. David Marx who often held temple services for the Hebrew Benevolent Congregation on Sunday for the highly assimilated German-Jewish Community of the South, who identified as whites and embraced the white racial separatist cultural norms of the time. Indeed there was much intermarriage between Jews and White Gentiles during the Southern progressive era, and though Jews often employed Negroes, they considered interracial relationships abominable.

    The Seligs were a notable family that had historically helped to establish religious culture for Southern Jewry.

  • Mary Phagan

    Mary Phagan was born in Florence, Alabama in 1899. Mary Phagan was the daughter of Fannie Phagan and William Joshua Phagan who had died three months before she was born. Shortly after Mary Phagan’s birth, Fannie Phagan moved with her children to her family residence in Marietta, Georgia.

    In 1912, Fannie Phagan married John W. Coleman and moved with him and her children to Bellwood, a community near downtown Atlanta. Mary Phagan planned to wait until the following fall to enrol in school and so, like many other girls her age, she took a job at the National Pencil Company. For 12 cents an hour, she secured erasers to pencils. Her brothers and sisters who worked in the cotton mill made only 5 cents per hour. On the morning of Confederate Memorial Day, Saturday, April 26, 1913, she dressed up and headed to the factory to pick up her pay. She was found dead early the next morning in the factory basement. At the time of her death, Mary Phagan was almost 14 years old.

  • Jim Conley

    At the time of Mary Phagan’s murder, Jim Conley, a janitor at the National Pencil Company, was 27 years old. Prior to the murder, Conley had experienced previous problems with the law, having been found guilty of petty theft and disorderly conduct and drunkenness. He played an instrumental role in the trial of Leo Frank. His testimony, spoken with confidence and consistency, was the evidence that led to Frank’s conviction. It was unique at that time, that the testimony of an African American was used to convict a white man in Georgia. After the Leo Frank trial, Jim Conley was sentenced to a chain gang for being an accessory in Mary Phagan’s murder.

  • Newt Lee

    Newt Lee was the night watchman for The National Pencil Company. On the afternoon of Saturday, April 26, 1913, he arrived at the factory at 4 p.m., two hours early for his regular shift. He was told by Leo Frank to leave and return at his regular time, 6 p.m. After Newt Lee’s return, Leo Frank left the factory.

    It was around 3 a.m. on the morning of April 27th when Newt Lee went down to the basement of the factory to use the bathroom earmarked for black workers. On his rounds, he noticed a body which he could not identify. He immediately called the police who arrived at the factory a short while later. Newt Lee was extremely distraught and agitated about his discovery. This behaviour, combined with the murder notes found near the body, which referred to “a long tall black negro”, led to Newt Lee’s arrest. Although he was never charged in the crime, Newt Lee was held for months in jail as a suspect in the murder.

  • Hugh Dorsey

    At the time of the Leo Frank trial, Hugh Dorsey was 42 years old. He was the Solicitor General of Fulton County. Hugh Dorsey was the prosecutor in the Leo Frank trial. He was in charge of the investigation before the trial began. Hugh Dorsey understood that it was his role to find Mary Phagan’s killer, bring him to trial and convict him.

    He was aware of the emotion this case had provoked in the local citizens and he knew that this case could propel his career forward. In the past, Dorsey’s opponents had misjudged his abilities and this turned out to be an advantage for him in the Leo Frank case. From the start, Hugh Dorsey believed that Leo Frank was guilty of the murder of Mary Phagan.

  • Tom Watson

    Tom Watson was a politician and newspaper editor. It was in his second role that he wielded great influence in the Leo Frank case. The Jeffersonian was Tom Watson’s newspaper. In it he included articles criticizing life in the big city and the industrialization of Georgia and used his editorial platform to stir up prejudice against minority groups, including Jews and Catholics. His supporters consisted mostly of Georgians who came from the more rural, agricultural parts of the state.

    In the Jeffersonian, Tom Watson stirred up virulent feelings of antisemitism amongst his readers. He alleged that Leo Frank was a deviant and that there was a Jewish conspiracy nationwide that was actively trying to free a guilty Leo Frank by paying huge sums of money for his freedom. Tom Watson portrayed the victim, Mary Phagan, as representative of the poor, innocent girls of the South who, for economic reasons, were forced to work in factories in the cities to help support their families. The lynching of Leo Frank, according to Tom Watson, was not a lynching at all, but simply the noble citizens of Georgia carrying out the sentence against Leo Frank which was handed down by the court.

  • Judge Roan

    At the time of the Leo Frank trial, Judge Leonard Roan was 64 years old. He was in ill health when the trial began. Like other jurists of his time, Roan did not attend law school. He “apprenticed” at a law firm in Griffin, Georgia. Leonard Roan had presided over many murder trials in Atlanta. His colleagues viewed him as fair, competent and well prepared. It is said that Leonard Roan may have presided over more important criminal cases than any other judge in Georgia. Judge Roan did not survive to see Leo Frank’s lynching.

    After the guilty verdict, Leo Frank’s lawyers petitioned Judge Leonard Roan to rehear the case. Among other issues, they cited the content of the murder notes, the attacks on Leo Frank’s character during the trial, and the prevailing atmosphere of antisemitism. Judge Roan, in his decision, explained that he was not certain of Leo Frank’s guilt but as a result of the jury’s certainty, the guilty verdict had to stand. Almost a year later Judge Roan was confined to a facility in Massachusetts as his health had worsened. Knowing that these would be his last comments on the case, Judge Roan requested clemency for Leo Frank, recommending that the sentence be commuted to life in prison.

THE EVENTS

  • Saturday, April 26, 1913, was Confederate Memorial Day. At approximately 11:50 that morning, Mary Phagan took a streetcar from her home in Bellwood to the pencil company. She worked on the second floor of the building in the metal room attaching metal tips to hold erasers on the pencils. She was among one hundred or so other young girls and women employed at the factory. Unable to work for several days earlier that week because the shipment of metal was late in arriving, Mary wanted to stop by the factory on her way to the Confederate Memorial Day parade in order to pick up her pay from the superintendent, Leo Frank.

    In the early morning hours of Sunday, April 27, the body of Mary Phagan was discovered by night watchman Newt Lee in the basement of the National Pencil Company. Lee notified the police and led them into the pencil factory’s basement. They observed a young girl’s body so covered with soot that they at first had trouble ascertaining that the victim was white. Two handwritten notes lay near the body and referred to “a long tall black negro.” Night watchman Lee, who fit the description, was arrested for the crime.

    Police officers drove Leo Frank from his house to the funeral home to identify the body and then to the scene of the crime. Over the next several days, police questioned two factory employees said to have been enamoured with Mary. By Tuesday, April 29, both men had been cleared. Police then turned their attention to Leo Frank, the last man to admit seeing Mary alive. Frank was arrested later that day and held in a cell at the police station.

  • On May 23, the Grand Jury convened to decide whether to charge Leo Frank with murder. Fulton County Solicitor General Hugh Manson Dorsey presented little physical evidence and relied solely on the testimony of a few key witnesses to buttress his case. He contended that Frank had raped and murdered Mary Phagan and had then tried to hide her body in the basement of the pencil factory. The next day, after deliberating only five minutes, the Grand Jury indicted Leo Frank for the murder of Mary Phagan. Frank was transferred from the police station to the Fulton County Jail. Newt Lee remained in jail under suspicion as a material witness.

    Days after Frank’s indictment, a tip caused police to return their attention to another man who had come under suspicion earlier, Jim Conley, the pencil company’s black janitor. When initially questioned and suspected of writing the “murder notes” found near the body, Conley had claimed he could not read or write. That claim was disputed by Frank, who knew that Conley was lying and was in fact literate. Under more intense questioning by police, Conley admitted that he could read and write. Comparisons of his signature to the murder notes confirmed that Conley had penned them.

  • The prosecution’s theory was that Conley’s last affidavit was true: Frank was the murderer, and the murder notes had been dictated by Frank in an effort to pin the crime on Newt Lee.

    To prove this, Dorsey planned to present a timeline for the murder, to establish that Frank had often used Conley in concealing his pursuit of young women in his employ, and especially, to show that Frank intended to have his way with Mary Phagan in the metal room of the factory.

  • The defense’s theory was that Conley was the murderer. The team of Rosser and Arnold hoped to prove that Frank’s schedule on the day of the murder made it impossible for him to have committed the crime. They expected to show that there was no preexisting relationship between their client and the murder victim and to challenge Solicitor Dorsey’s portrayal of Frank as a sexual deviant. Most importantly, the defense sought to discredit Jim Conley.

    In its closing statements, the defense further exposed the racial dimensions of the case by asserting that Frank would never have been prosecuted had he not been a Jew, and by portraying Conley as a drunk and a liar.

  • On July 28, 1913, a hot Atlanta morning, the trial of Leo Frank began in a courtroom crowded with spectators. The presiding judge was Leonard Roan. Hugh Dorsey was the prosecuting attorney. Frank’s legal team was led by Luther Rosser. By early afternoon, jury selection had been completed and the confrontation between the prosecution and the defense—one that would occupy the all-male white jury, the entire city of Atlanta and, ultimately, the nation—commenced.

    The longer the trial wore on, the more public sentiment turned against Frank. Charging that the jurors were

    intimidated by the rising and heated public outcry for Frank’s conviction, the defense requested a mistrial. The motion was denied. Fearing that an acquittal would endanger the safety of Frank and his attorneys, Judge Roan brokered a deal in which neither the defendant nor his lawyers would be present in the courtroom when the verdict was read.

    On August 25, it took the jury an hour and forty-five minutes to reach a decision. Frank was convicted of murder. As the guilty verdict was announced, the crowd outside the courtroom erupted with shouts of celebration. One day following the conviction, Judge Roan sentenced Frank to death by hanging. The sentence was scheduled to be carried out on October 10, 1913.

The Trial

“Little Mary Phagan went to town one day,
And went to the pencil factory to see the big parade.
She left home at eleven, and kissed her mother goodbye,
Not one time did the poor child think that she was going to die.

Leo Frank met her, with a brutal heart we know, He smiled and said,
“Little Mary, Now you will go home no more.” He sneaked along behind her,
Till she reached the metal room,
He laughed and said, “Little Mary, you have met your fatal doom.”

She fell upon her knees, and to Leo Frank she pled, He took this stick from the trash pile and hit her across the head.

They took him to the jailhouse, They locked him in a cell, But the poor innocent Negro Knew nothing for to tell.

I have a notion in my head that when Frank comes to die, And stands the examination in the courthouse in the skies, He will be astonished at the questions
The angels are going to say of how he killed little Mary on one holiday.

Come all you good people wherever you may be,
And supposing little Mary belonged to you or me.
Her mother sat a weeping--she weeps and mourns all day-- She prays to meet her darling in a better world some day. “