The Murder of Mary Phagan and the Lynching of Leo Frank
Posted By admin on September 7, 2015
EDITORS NOTE: On the 100th anniversary of its original publication, we are proud to present this, Tom Watsons hard-hitting article on the Leo Frank case. The audio version was recorded by Vanessa Neubauer. http://nationalvanguard.org/audio/A%20Full%20Review%20of%20the%20Leo%20Frank%20Case%20Full-A.mp3 by Thomas E. Watson, Watsons Magazine, Volume 20 Number 5, March 1915 ON THE 23rd page of Puck, for the week ending January 16, 1915, there is, in the smallest possible type, in the smallest possible space, at the bottom of the page, the notice of ownership, required by law. Mankind are informed that Puck is published by a corporation of the same name, Nathan Strauss, Jr., being President, and H. Grant Strauss being Secretary and Treasurer. You are...
ON SATURDAY morning at 11:30AM, April 26, 1913 Mary Phagan ate a poor girls lunch of bread and boiled cabbage and said goodbye to her mother for the last time. Dressed for parade-watching (for this was Confederate Memorial Day) in a lavender dress, ribbon-bedecked hat, and parasol, she left her home in hardscrabble working-class Bellwood at 11:45, and caught the streetcar for downtown Atlanta. Before the festivities, though, she stopped to see Superintendent Leo M. Frank at the National Pencil Company and pick up from him her $1.20 pay for the one day she had worked there during the previous week. She had been laid off for most of that week because the material needed for the tipping department in the metal room, where she worked, had been late in arriving. She...
GEORGIA, as a part of the South, is a place where, though freethinkers are certainly not unknown, the vast majority of the population is deeply committed to Christianity largely Protestant, fundamentalist Christianity. Ones personal walk with Jesus is taken very seriously here, and the religion informs almost every aspect of private, family, and public life. The fundamentalist worldview is dominant, as it is throughout the South, which, along with a few border states, is not called the Bible Belt for nothing. This was doubly true in 1913. One of the core beliefs of fundamentalism is literalism, a belief that every word of the scriptures was directly inspired by God and is literally true. The position of the average Georgian on the Bible is...
IT MAY WELL BE the greatest murder mystery of all time. Some assert that the Mary Phagan murder case is solved, but those who so assert are of two different and mutually exclusive camps. And those two camps still stand diametrically opposed to this day, four generations later. The case aroused the outrage and ire and vengeance of two great communities. One, the Jewish community, feel overwhelmingly today, and felt to a lesser but still substantial extent in 1913, that Leo Frank was tried and condemned simply because he was a Jew. They believe that Leo Frank is so obviously innocent that he never would have been tried had it not been for endemic anti-Semitism in 1913 Atlanta. And they have been remarkably effective in making Southern anti-Semitism the leitmotif...
Download: Argument of Hugh M. Dorsey at the Trial of Leo M. Frank in Adobe PDF format. Published in 1914, this 146-page book, based on the trial transcript, contains the text of some, but not all, of the nine hours of closing arguments prosecutor Dorsey made on Aug. 22, 23, and 25, 1913. Copy Available here: Argument of Hugh M. Dorsey at the Trial of Leo M. Frank. Click Here for the Long Version (the site has strong partisan opinions, but its source materials are invaluable): Hugh M. Dorsey References: American State Trials Volume 10 (1918) By John Lawson. Download the argument of Hugh M. Dorsey (right mouse click and save): Hugh M Dorsey at the Trial of Leo Frank and for the Aftermath review the massive 1,800 page legal archive on the Leo Frank case 1913 to...
The following book was just added to Leo Frank Info Library: Dr. Edward R. Fields Analysis Dr. Edward R. Fields wrote his take on the case in The Thunderbolt magazine in February 1961. He takes the side against Frank as you will clearly see by reading it. Adobe PDF Format: Dr. Edward Fields Analysis, Thunderbolt Magazine, 1961
I hope that these materials will help you to gain a far greater understanding of the case. Watsons Magazine Tom Watson published a monthly magazine and took a particular interest in Franks case. This interest stemmed in part from his own obvious anti-Semitism and also from a regional, populist, anti-big-business sentiment, as reflected in the five selected magazines we have below. But merely because we do not share many of his perspectives does not mean we cannot learn from his work both facts of the case, and the passions of the times. 1. January 1915 Watson introduces the Frank case in this edition. 2. March 1915 Here Watson goes into much further detail on the Frank case. 3. August 1915 Watson calls the Frank trial the celebrated...
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The Murder of Mary Phagan and the Lynching of Leo Frank
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