A unique collection comprised of some 25 items related to the story of Leo Frank, an American Jew wrongfully convicted and lynched in 1913 in Atlanta GA for murder of the young Mary Phagan is up for auction at Jerusalem’s Kedem Auction House. It includes a postcard with a photograph showing Frank's hanged body; a piano roll for a player piano, with the melody of a ballad written about the murder; extensive legal correspondence dating from the 1980s regarding the struggle led by the Anti-Defamation League to exonerate Frank, and more.
The story took place in April of 1913, when the body of 13-year-old Mary Phagan was found in the cellar of the pencil factory where she worked. A number of suspects were arrested: the factory's night watchman, Newt Lee, who found the body and called the police, Jim Conley, the factory's janitor - both African-americans, and the company manager, Leo Frank, a Jew who had been raised and educated in New York. The police investigation was tainted by anti-Northern resentment and anti-Semitism, and Frank was put on trial and charged with murder, based on, most notably, the testimony of Conley that he had assisted Frank in moving the body. On August 28, 1913, the jury found Leo Frank guilty, and he was sentenced to death.
Frank's death sentence, however, was commuted by Georgia's governor, John Slaton, to life imprisonmentл Several days following the governor's announcement a "Vigilance Committee" was convened in Mary Phagan’s hometown of Marietta which decided to lynch Frank. They broke into the prison, kidnapped Frank and hanged him in broad daylight. The incident, attended at one point by many hundreds of onlookers, was documented in photographs. The names of the numerous perpetrators were known to all, but not a single one of them was prosecuted.
The incident led to a mass exodus of Jews from Georgia and the establishment of the Anti-Defamation League by the B'nai B'rith organization. The bulk of the present collection consists of various legal documents and pieces of legal correspondence related to the ADL's initiative aiming to exonerate Leo Frank that began roughly seventy years after the lynching.
"A toxic mixture of hatreds – racism, anti-Semitism, tensions between disparate socioeconomic groups, mutual loathing between "traditional Southerners" and "progressive Yankees" from the North – was brought to bear, and Frank's brutal lynching was the tragic result. It is a grim reminder of America's past that, however, must be remembered", says Meron Eren, CEO and co-founder of Kedem Auction House.
The collection includes: a "Souvenir postcard" with photo showing Frank's hanged body shortly after the lynching; a booklet issued by the Rhodes' Colossus factory of Atlanta in support of Leo Frank; a piano roll for a player piano, with the melody of the ballad "Little Mary Phagan" with lyrics printed alongside the perforations on the rolled sheet; issues of The New York Times dated June 22, 1915 and The Denver Express dated May 27, 1915 reporting on the incident; 20 copies of letters and memoranda pertaining to efforts to clear Frank's name, by various lawyers working for the legal firm Troutman, Sanders, Lockerman & Ashmore of Atlanta, GA, and more.