www.atlantajewishtimes.com
LEO FRANK CENTENNIAL
Oney Walks With the Ghosts of the Lynching
By Zach Itzkovitz
was a fabulous witness. I read every
single word of his testimony, and there
were days that he had me convinced.”
The program at the Strand was
titled “The Ghosts of Leo Frank: Reckoning With Georgia’s Most Infamous
Murders 100 Years later.” Oney’s book
title also introduces the idea of ghosts
from Phagan’s murder and Frank’s
lynching.
Why do the ghosts of the Frank
case still haunt us? It’s easy to acknowledge how much has changed
in a century. It may be harder to recognize what hasn’t changed and what
may never change.
Deaton followed Oney with an explanation: “It is still our story, and we
risk our own future if we don’t return
to walk over this ground.” ■
By Zach Itzkovitz
prejudice.”
Barnes equated Frank’s lynching
with the modern prejudice against
Mexican-Americans
and
Donald
Trump’s supposed plan to build an impassable wall between the two countries at Mexico’s expense.
Catherine Lewis, a professor of history at Kennesaw State University, discussed the social and political distance
we have traveled since Frank’s lynching but also acknowledged the leaps we
haven’t made.
Lewis said it is important to keep
Mary Phagan’s murder in 1913 from being overshadowed by Frank’s lynching
two years later.
“It’s important for us to understand,” she said, “that that trial and
lynching revealed deep divides among
the incidents, in terms of class, region,
ethnicity, religion and gender, that still
reverberate.”
Richard Banz, the executive director of the Southern Museum of Civil
War & Locomotive History, mentioned
the impossibility of changing the past
but the possibility of changing the present and future. With a memory of Phagan and Frank, we can equip ourselves
to deal with similar instances that may
arise today or tomorrow and improve
conditions to diminish the possibility
of history repeating itself, Banz said. ■
Remembering to Avoid Repeating
C
ongregation Ner Tamid in Marietta hosted former Gov. Roy
Barnes, among others, to reflect
on the lynching of Leo Frank on Monday, Aug. 17, exactly 100 years after the
Jewish factory superintendent died a
few miles away.
To Barnes, Frank’s lynching is important to remember to ensure that
nothing similar ever happens again.
“It could happen again in a heartbeat,” Barnes said, “and the reason it
could is because of lack of political
leadership and religious leadership
and the intersection of passion and
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AUGUST 21 ▪ 2015
I
t’s possible but highly unlikely that
Leo Frank was the killer of Mary
Phagan, journalist Steve Oney,
author of “And the Dead Shall Rise:
The Murder of Mary Phagan and the
Lynching of Leo Frank,” told a packed
Earl Smith Strand Theatre on Marietta
Square on Thursday, Aug. 13.
Oney joined Georgia Historical Society senior historian Stan Deaton onstage to mark the centennial of Frank’s
lynching.
After detailing events surrounding the lynching, Oney discussed his
book’s methods and sources. He said
Bill Kinney, former associate editor of
The Marietta Daily Journal, guided him
toward witnesses. Many were children
of the culprits, including George and
Lucille Morris, son and daughter of
Judge Newt Morris, and Eugene Herbert Clay Jr., son of Herbert Clay.
Oney believes, as most historians
do, that Jim Conley killed Phagan, acting on his own. He noticed similarities
between Conley’s written and spoken
statements and the notes found with
Phagan’s body.
“Conley had a penchant to use
compound adjectives — long, tall,
black — in everything he wrote and
said,” Oney said. “To me, the authorship of those notes places this crime at
Jim Conley’s hands.”
But he acknowledged that Frank
could have been the killer. “The prosecution presented a credible case
against him,” Oney said. “Jim Conley
AJT
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