The Lynching of Leo Frank

-Zvi A. Sesling

April 25, 2011

Prologue

He hangs from the tree, black hood over his head,

Hands tied behind his back

Starched white shirt, now wrinkled

Head slumped forward, beneath

The hood his eyes bulge,

His tongue sticks out

The National Pencil Factory

Married Lucille Selig. 

Not to mock those staring at him as he hangs in silence

                    Before his killers

Dead

Now in a funeral home, people have broken a window

because they want to get in, to see the man who

                    Killed Mary Phagan

Do Jews have horns like the devil as some say or

Perhaps a tail

Or a pitchfork

As the citizens of Marietta, Georgia march past him

His wife is at home, alone

Leo Frank, Factory Supervisor

Leo Frank, born in Cuero, Texas in 1884,

A Jew who grew up

                     In Brooklyn, NY

Graduated from Cornell in 1906, learned the pencil trade

                     Came to Atlanta to manage

The National Pencil Factory

                     For five years

Life is good for the twenty-nine year-old and he is one of the

Heads of the south’s largest Jewish communities

Life couldn’t be better

                     For a New York

                     Jew

                     in Atlanta

         Mary Phagan, Factory Worker

Mary Phagan, thirteen, daughter of the new century

                     With a future as pretty as

                     The young teen in the white dress

On Confederate Memorial Day she went to the factory

                     For the dollar and twenty-cents

Owed her before she was laid off

Pretty girl with brown curls and a ribbon bow

Pretty girl alone in the factory to collect her pay

An Early Death

Too young. O how young. Only thirteen and

Her body found in its blood soaked dress

Body limp

Pall of death

On her face.

Her body, her life, her mother intensely

Scrutinized and is there a person who knows

Who killed her

Was it the janitor, Jim Conley, suspected for

                      More than sixty years

Could it have been the Negroes who those

Southerners suspected

There were so many who could have choked life

From her in 1913 Marietta

They were Christian men, white, black

And a Jew –

                    The Jew from the north

                    The Jew who ran the factory

Mary Phagan - her good Christian brethren

Were sure her murderer was the Jew because

It could never have been one

Of them because good Christian

                    Men that they were could not have

Put that rope around her neck and squeezed out

Her pretty life

The Trial

Many careers are made at trials. Prosecutors become

Governors

Prosecutors have an eye toward the future when they put someone

Else’s foot in the grave

Prosecutors show no mercy, create their own truths

Always fight to win

Whatever the cost

So it was with Hugh Dorsey who fought not fair or good

But took the path to victory

The only truth was Dorsey’s, manufactured like the pencils

In Leo Frank’s factory

Frank’s end would be Dorsey’s future 

There were many who testified, the friends of Leo Frank, the

Friends of Mary Phagan

Whites and blacks

And, of course, the Christians, those good people whose

Lies would send Leo Frank to jail, and to his ultimate death

Who could only see evil in the northern Jew, worse than Negroes

More dangerous than the Negroes who knew their place in southern society

while this Jew – a Yankee Jew

Lorded over southern gentlemen and southern ladies

Bossed them, fired them

Laid them off

Only he could be the person to kill pretty Mary Phagan

In her white dress

That untouched girl desired by all who saw her and all they could say or think

That it was a Jew who despoiled her

An innocent Christian girl

And he killed her

Though nothing had been proven, not the despoiling, not the violence, not the

Murder

But Leo Frank was found guilty for it was only a Jew who would do such a thing

                               Some citizens of Marietta testified for him

                               Others testified against him

                               Those in favor told truths

                               Those against told lies

Some claimed to see things that never were or they could not have seen

Potential witnesses were arrested and jailed questioned and threatened

In the end the stories pasted together to cover truth

to cover Leo Frank with the patchwork of guilt

And what of the other suspects 

What of Arthur Mullinax and Newt Lee

What of John Gantt and Jim Conley Yes, what of Jim Conley

And the liars who pasted the patchwork, what of them

And the liars who lied because it was a Jew – a Yankee Jew

After all someone

Needed to pay for the crime

Lennie Quinn and George Epps, the latter only fifteen, yet old enough to tell a lie

And Monteen Stover, a year younger, but sufficient in age to warp the truth

And Robert House, who had once upheld the law, now telling lies to convict

The innocent

Pinkerton and Burns detectives could not uncover truth

New rumors grew, were proven false

Bickering among the factions

Was commonplace

The grand jury took only ten minutes to find Leo Frank guilty

Leo Frank, who had led a life of

Sixteen million minutes

But it took only ten minutes to determine the rest of his life

O, how they all lied – Jim Conley, Minola McKnight and the rest –

Lies, all lies

So that Hugh Dorsey

Could win his case

Those who testified – Mary Phagan’s mother, young George Epps,

Newt Lee, Sgt. L.S. Dobbs, Det. John Starnes, Det. John Black –

The litany of names goes on: W.W. (Boots) Rogers, Grace Hicks, John

Gantt, R.B. Barrett and Harry Scott, the Pinkerton detective and Dr.

Roy Harris and N.V. Darley and Maggie White and so many others

All recruited by Hugh Dorsey

For ten days they marched in and made up their testimony for Dorsey

For the jury

But there were witnesses for Leo Frank – twenty-two in one day, including

Alonzo Mann

Who said a lot

Except the truth

His truth would have saved Leo Frank, the one real truth kept locked

Inside Alonzo Mann for almost seventy years – that Jim Conley, who

Claimed he could not lift Mary Phagan

Had actually slung her over his shoulder

Her lifeless body swaying as he carted her away

Young Alonzo Mann scared by the threats of death by Conley went

Home, told his mother who told him to keep the secret – which he did for so many years

Character witness after character witness tried to help Leo Frank

They told about his:

Goodness

Innocent behavior

Good morals

Unequaled honesty

Then Leo Frank testified, rebutted the lies and accused the liars of their lies

But Hugh Dorsey was viscous in his closing statement and tried to counter the charges

Of anti-Semitism and accused Leo of deviant behavior and it made no difference that

The defense portrayed Leo’s role in the community as exemplary but the jury still

Found him guilty on August 25, 1913. The legal machinations dragged on and on

Until June 20, 1915

When Gov. John Stanton

Commuted his death penalty to life

He knew Leo was not guilty

So in the middle of the night the law took Leo from the

Fulton County Prison to the George State Penitentiary.

But no one anticipated Tom Watson, the publisher of two magazines –

The Jeffersonian and Watson’s Magazine

O yes, Tom Watson.  He saw opportunity too. He opposed the commutation and called

For the good people of Marietta to take justice into their own hands

To execute Leo Frank

As the jury had decided

In prison Leo had his throat slashed by another prisoner and his life saved by two doctors

who also happened to be prisoners - an act that would extend his life for a month

Until twenty-five armed men - the Knights of Mary Phagan - kidnapped

Leo Frank from prison and in seven cars drove toward Marietta

Even today stories persist that some of the Knights thought Leo didn’t commit the crime

But in Frey’s Grove they put the hood on his head

And the rope around his neck and hanged him from a tree

Epilogue

I

Leo Frank protested his innocence but knew the end was coming

his last bequest was to have his wedding ring returned to his wife

which the good men of Marietta did –

Honest lynchers

You might say

II

Crowds walked by to see Leo Frank hanging from a tree and the photographs taken were

To mark the event

Souvenir postcards were printed

The crowds walked by and defiled him until he was taken to the undertaker where

thousands came to view the lynched Jew who had killed Mary Phagan

III

A train transported Leo Frank’s body to New York

In Brooklyn’s Mount Carmel Cemetery his mother and wife were there

as he was quietly buried

IV

Leo Frank’s killers walked away, lived their lives out with their wives and children and

Grandchildren

Leo Frank’s widow died forty-seven years later  

V

He was reelected in 1918

Tom Watson was elected to the United States Senate in 1920

VI

In 1982 Alonzo Mann signed an affidavit claiming Leo Frank’s

Innocence

And named Jim Conley

As the killer

VII

Because of Alonzo Mann’s statement the Georgia Board of Pardons gave

A posthumous pardon

They said the state did not fulfill its commitment to protect Leo

but The State of Georgia

Has never officially absolved

Leo Frank

Zvi A. Sesling has published poetry in numerous magazines both in print and online in the United States, Great Britain, New Zealand, Canada and Israel. Among the publications are: Ibbetson St., Midstream, Poetica, The Deronda Review, Voices Israel, Saranac Review, New Delta Review, Plainsong, Asphodel, Haz Mat Review, Istanbul Literary Review, The Chaffin Journal, Ship of Fools, Chiron Review, Poetry Monthly Interational, Matrix, The Tower, New Vilna Review and Main Street Rag. He was awarded Third Place (2004) and First Prize (2007) in the Reuben Rose International Poetry Competition and was a finalist in the 2009 Cervena Barva Press Chapbook Contest. In 2008 he was selected to read his poetry at New England/Pen “Discovery” by Boston Poet Laureate Sam Cornish. He was a featured reader in the 2010 Jewish Poetry Festival in Brookline, MA. His poems have been published in the U.S., Canada, England, Israel and New Zealand.  He is a regular reviewer for the Boston Small Press and Poetry Scene and he edits the Muddy River Poetry Review. He is author of King of the Jungle, (Ibbetson St., 2010) and a chapbook Across Stones of Bad Dream (Cervana Barva, 2011) and a second full length poetry book, Fire Tongue (Cervena Barva) is scheduled for 2011.

Copyright Zvi A. Sesling /The New Vilna Review 2011.