The Murder of Mary Phagan
Part 1 in a series of podcasts on this subject was first broadcast two weeks ago. Part 3 broadcasts tonight. The series will likely continue through January.
In the wake of Mary Phagan's murder on 26th of April 1913 came "the trial of the century", culminating in the lynching of Leo Frank in 1915. Overall I'm finding it a fascinating subject to examine, quite informative about race relations between Whites, jews and blacks, then and now.
Labels: AoTR, leo frank, mary phagan, podcast
posted by Tanstaafl at 12/24/2013 04:38:00 PM
1 Comments:
I read a longish book on this case entitled And the Dead Shall Rise.
My takeaway was as follows:
There was absolutely no antisemitism behind the prosecution. Indeed, while southerners (and Frank's defenense) were open and unashamed of their racism, they made loud proclamations of how they found religious bigotry beneath them and unsavory.
Organized Jewry came to Frank's defense, and this awful crime--a rape and murder--was what got them all excited. Reministicent of the Hi Fi Murders that the NAACP got involved in. They have since rewritten the history of this case. Frank was hated because the crime was absolutely terrible and Phagan was rather a beautiful young girl. It was not because he was a Jew.
Frank did not take the stand, did not protest his innocence, and had a reputation for sexually harassing the factory girls that worked for him. His wife, furthermore, openly expressed her contempt for goyim.
Finally, here we have a Southern Jewry that took the testimony of a black man among others to condemn a white man. Think about that. Even by modern standards there was more than enough evidence to convict, even though it was not a 100% case. The idea that it was the expressin of antisemitism is ridiculous. He was ultimately lynch-mobbed because of the atrocity he did and the use of unlawful influence on the governor to secure a pardon. Yes it was shameful, but it had nothing to do with antisemitism. It did have a lot to do with what Hillaire Belloc calls "Semitism" however.
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