captainsarcasm: An Atlanta History Lesson

First off, let me apologize for having to put this in the blog section. I originally replied to the blog written by captainsarcasm, but for some reason whenever I click on the link under Recent Comments it takes me to the first page of the news article, not to the third where my correction resides.

In July of 2008 captainsarcasm wrote a blog entitled, "Irresponsible Reporting." This was his take on what he thought was, well, irresponsible reporting regarding the deadly fight at the Red Room. He ended his post with a vague reference to Leo Frank. Below is captainsarcasm's original post from July, followed immediately by my post.

Again, sorry it's in this section.

"Irresponsible Reporting"
Submitted by captainsarcasm on Mon, 07/07/2008 - 6:01pm.
Mr. Abercromie was surely a great man who lived a great life.

It's a shame that alcohol-fueled testosterone led to his death.

Yes, people get killed. It's a shame in this day and age, but it's a scourge as old as time itself.

Yes, Peachtree City has alcohol and bars. And sometimes people get drunk.

And now, the irresponsible reporting:
White said she was unsure whether there was any racial component to the altercation. She said Abercrombie used no racial slurs. The only thing that stood out was that Abercrombie was white and his attacker and the attacker’s half-dozen companions were black.

What in the world does that have to do with anything? From the accounts Ms. White provides, it sure sounds like this was over a girl. Maybe we should never let girls out - yeah, that makes sense. Kinda like it makes sense to say "she was unsure" there were racial issues.

Sounds like young and dumb leads to a tragedy. The gentleman got hit once, and went into a seizure. Was there malice? Certainly, and those responsible should be brought to justice. But do we indict baseball when players get hit in the perfect spot to kill a player? Sometimes unfortunate things happen.

Why anyone is indicting the police department's response is beyond me. The gentleman was promptly hospitalized, and the swelling started a day three days later. Maybe we should indict the hospital, as they obviously didn't solve that problem. It wasn't a death until July 5. I think too many people think that crimes get solved in 60 minutes from watching TV - see how many times actual crimes get solved, and you'd be heartbroken as to how many times criminals aren't brought to justice until years after the crime.

While the pain is real for those who lost their friend, anyone who uses this as an opportunity to indict anyone except for the person who did this is just causing trouble.

There is a reason that justice moves at the pace it does - otherwise, we'd be lynching Leo Frank again - look it up, kids.

"captainsarcasm: An Atlanta History Lesson"
Submitted by PTC Avenger on Fri, 12/26/2008 - 4:17pm.
You should rename your post to "Irresponsible Blogging." Do you even know what happened in the Leo Frank case? Probably not, judging from your insinuation that justice was never pursued. I realize this is an old thread, but I have never seen it until now. I'll try to keep this brief.

Leo Frank managed the National Pencil Factory in Atlanta. One day he demanded sex from a 12 year old employee named Mary Phagan, she refused, so he brutally raped and murdered her.

April 26th, 1913 - Leo Frank had James Conley (a witness who later testified during trial) "watch out" for him while he "chatted" with Mary Phagan. Frank demanded sex and Phagan refused. Frank beat her mercilessly. He then pulled her underwear off, tied it around her throat, and raped her. After Frank finished he strangled her to death with a cord. Frank summoned Conley into the office, where he found him crouching over the unconscious girl. Leo told him that Mary had resisted his advances, and when he grabbed her she had fallen and struck her head. Frank and Conley took the body to the basement, where Conley was to burn her in the factory's furnace. That night a watchman, Newt Lee, found the body and called the police. Frank was later arrested.

On May 23rd a grand jury indicted Frank for murder. During the subsequent trial many people testified against Frank and his perverse antics. Some included Tom Watson testifying about underage orgies Frank would hold and Robert House, an ex-policeman, who testified that he once saw Leo Frank and a young girl in the woods at a North Druid Hills park engaging in immoral acts.

On the morning of the verdict the Fifth Regiment, Georgia National Guard, was posted throughout the city, and Judge Roan gave the jurors their instructions. Both sides admitted that the trial was impartial and fair. There were two ballots; one, as to Leo's guilt, was unanimous; and the second, as to recommendation for mercy, which would mean a life sentence. The first vote here was 11-to-1 against leniency, but the solitary juror later joined the others.

August 26, 1913 - Judge L.S. Roan sentenced Leo Frank to hang for the murder of Mary Phagan. Frank's legal team immediately asked for a new trial, and the Supreme Court almost heard the case, but instead voted 7-2 against it.

June 20, 1915. In his last day in office, Georgia governor John Slaton was bribed and commuted the sentence of Leo Frank, from death to life in prison. Governor Slaton announced the commutation from hanging to life imprisonment, and all hell broke loose in Atlanta. The militia was called out and thrown around the governor's mansion, seven miles from the heart of the city, and martial law was declared. Hundreds of automobile loads of armed men raced through the streets to the executive home, where the mob trampled the grounds and screamed at the curtained windows.

August 16, 1915 - A caravan of eight vehicles bearing 25 armed men from the Atlanta area arrived at the Georgia State Prison in Milledgeville around 10 p.m. Calling themselves the Knights of Mary Phagan, they cut the telephone lines, surprised the guards and entered the barrack of Leo Frank, who two years earlier had been convicted of the murder of 12-year-old Mary Phagan in one of the most infamous trials of the century. The intruders seized Frank and departed back to Marietta. On August 17, 1915 Leo Frank was hanged there in Frey's grove. When word of the lynching spread, crowds gathered to see the body hanging from a tree.

So, there you have it. That's what really happened. Not exactly how you painted it, your version being that the poor innocent Jewish Leo Frank was the victim of a prejudiced mob mentality. No, you forgot to mention that he was indicted, tried, and found guilty for raping and murdering a 12-year-old. How dare you omit that information just so you can conveniently mold this awful incident to your own liking so you can make a point, an erroneous one at that. I really hope you read this, though I'm not anticipating a response.

You're welcome for the history lesson, kids.

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Hmmmm....PTC Avenger gets half the story?
Submitted by PTC_factchecker on Fri, 12/26/2008 - 10:44pm.

First off - way to read a really old post!

Second, my point was on base - here - see if this helps you any...

http://www.ajhs.org/publications/chapters/chapter.cfm?documentID=284

In 1913, Leo Frank was convicted of murdering Mary Phagan, a 13-year-old employee of the Atlanta pencil factory that Frank managed. After Georgia’s governor commuted his death sentence, a mob stormed the prison where Frank was being held and lynched him. Leo Frank thus became the only known Jew lynched in American history. The case still spurs debate and controversy –it even inspired a Broadway play. What are the facts of the Frank case?

"Little Mary Phagan," as she became known, left home on the morning of April 26 to pick up her wages at the pencil factory and view Atlanta’s Confederate Day parade. She never returned home. The next day, the factory night watchman found her bloody, sawdust-covered body in the factory basement. When the police asked Leo Frank, who had just completed a term as president of the Atlanta chapter of B’nai B’rith, to view her body, Frank became agitated. He confirmed personally paying Mary her wages but could not say where she went next. Frank, the last to admit seeing Mary alive, became the prime suspect.

Georgia’s solicitor general, Hugh Dorsey, sought a grand jury indictment against Frank. Rumor circulated that Mary had been sexually assaulted. Factory employees offered apparently false testimony that Frank had made sexual advances toward them. The madam of a house of ill repute claimed that Frank had phoned her several times, seeking a room for himself and a young girl. In this era, the cult of Southern chivalry made it a "hanging crime" for African-American males to have sexual contact with the "flower of white womanhood." The accusations against Frank, a Northern-born, college-educated Jew, proved equally inflammatory.

For the grand jury, Hugh Dorsey painted Leo Frank as a sexual pervert who was both homosexual and who preyed on young girls. What he did not tell the grand jury was that a janitor at the factory, Jim Conley, had been arrested two days after Frank when he was seen washing blood off his shirt. Conley then admitted writing two notes that had been found by Mary Phagan’s body. The police assumed that, as author of these notes, Conley was the murderer; but Conley claimed, after apparent coaching from Dorsey, that Leo Frank had confessed to murdering Mary in the lathe room and then paid Conley to pen the notes and help him move Mary’s body to the basement.

Even after Frank’s housekeeper placed him at home, having lunch at the time of the murder and despite gross inconsistencies in Conley’s story, both the grand and trial jury chose to believe Conley. This was perhaps the first instance of a Southern black man’s testimony being used to convict a white man. In August of 1913, the jury found Frank guilty in less than four hours. Crowds outside the courthouse shouted, "Hang the Jew." Historian Leonard Dinnerstein reports that one juror had been overheard to say before his selection for the jury, "I am glad they indicted the G-d damn Jew. They ought to take him out and lynch him. And if I get on that jury, I’ll hang that Jew for sure."

Facing intimidation and mob rule, the trial judge sentenced Frank to death. He barred Frank from the courtroom on the grounds that, had he been acquitted, Frank might have been lynched by the crowd outside.

Despite these breaches of due process, Georgia’s higher courts rejected Frank’s appeals and the U. S. Supreme Court voted, 7-2, against reopening the case, with justices Oliver Wendell Holmes and Charles Evans Hughes dissenting. Frank’s survival depended on Georgia governor Frank Slaton. After a 12-day review of the evidence and letters recommending commutation from the trial judge (who must have had second thoughts) and from a private investigator who had worked for Hugh Dorsey, Slaton commuted Frank’s sentence to life imprisonment That night, state police kept a protesting crowd of 5,000 from the governor’s mansion. Wary Jewish families fled Atlanta. Slaton held firm. "Two thousand years ago," he wrote a few days later, "another Governor washed his hands and turned over a Jew to a mob. For two thousand years that governor’s name has been accursed. If today another Jew [Leo Frank] were lying in his grave because I had failed to do my duty, I would all through life find his blood on my hands and would consider myself an assassin through cowardice."

On August 17, 1915, a group of 25 men, described by peers as "sober, intelligent, of established good name and character" stormed the prison hospital where Leo Frank was recovering from having his throat slashed by a fellow inmate. They kidnapped Frank, drove him more than 100 miles to Mary Phagan’s home town of Marietta, Georgia and hanged him from a tree. Frank conducted himself with dignity, calmly proclaiming his innocence. Townsfolk were proudly photographed beneath Frank’s swinging corpse, pictures still valued today by their descendants. When his term expired a year later, Slaton did not run for reelection and Dorsey easily won election to the governor’s office.

In 1986, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles finally granted Leo Frank a posthumous pardon, not because they thought him innocent, but because his lynching deprived him of his right to further appeal. Mary Phagan’s descendants and their supporters still insist on his guilt.

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