Georgia Pardons Lynching Victim, ADL’s First Case

Leo Frank, a Jewish businessman whose lynching in 1915 became a rallying point for both the Ku Klux Klan and the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, was given a posthumous pardon Tuesday for the murder he denied committing.

The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles had refused to grant a pardon in December, 1983, despite Gov. Joe Frank Harris’ public statements in favor of the proposal.

But the board reversed itself and granted the pardon Tuesday after the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee and the Atlanta Jewish Federation submitted a new petition arguing that they should not have to prove Frank’s innocence, only that he was denied justice.

The action came less than a year after the death of Alonzo Mann, who came forward in 1982 to say that, as a 14-year-old office boy in Frank’s Atlanta pencil factory, he saw another man carrying the body of 13-year-old Mary Phagan.

Feared the Real Murderer

Mann said he did not speak out during Frank’s trial because he feared the real murderer. Mann died in March, 1985.

Frank’s lynching has been cited as the worst single incident of anti-Semitic violence in the United States, and the case was a catalyst for the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan.

It also was a factor in the creation of the ADL. Stu Lewengrub, Southeastern director of the Anti-Defamation League, said: “We can now finally close our files on our first case.”

Frank’s trial, which took place with crowds outside chanting “Hang the Jew,” brought him a death sentence for the 1913 murder of Phagan. The girl was beaten, strangled and her body dumped in the factory basement.

Lynched Near Girl’s Home

Shortly after then-Gov. John Slaton commuted Frank’s sentence to life in prison, an armed mob abducted Frank from a Milledgeville prison and, chanting anti-Semitic slogans, lynched him near Phagan’s home in Cobb County on Aug. 17, 1915.

The parole board held in 1983 that the evidence did not prove Frank was innocent. The one-page pardon issued Tuesday said: “Such a standard of proof, especially for a 70-year-old case, is almost impossible to satisfy.”

The document said the pardon was granted “in recognition of the state’s failure to protect the person of Leo Frank and thereby preserve his opportunity for continued legal appeal of his conviction, and in recognition of the state’s failure to bring his killer to justice, and as an effort to heal old wounds.”