Book Report of about Leo Frank's Trial & Lynching

The book AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE by Steve Oney

The book is about the doings concerning the trial of Leo Frank accused of sexually assaulting and murdering 13 year old Mary Phagan. The murder and trial was in Atlanta. The lynching took place in Marietta.

The text of the book is 649 pages, but also about 50 pages of notes in the back, which is worthy of reading.

The book is long and incredibly detailed. Something that detailed that goes on and can get boring in places to some people, I know it did to me. But I read on anyway because I felt I needed to read it all and glad I did. James Michener’s novels are also long and sometimes boring, but educational! You feel that you really read something, just like this book.

In the first of the book author Steve Oney said if it wasn’t for The Georgian, an Atlanta newspaper owned by owned by William Randolph Hearst rabble rousing heart grabbing headlines, the murder case would have taken its own natural course and properly careful manner. But instead the public was screaming for blood and the cops and D.A. had to hastily act, which caused errors. It is generally believed that Hearst had already started the Spanish American War – the Leo Frank/Mary Phagan story was small potatoes/

In the book, if you didn’t know already you will learn that the blacks in Georgia was treated as 2nd class citizens, maybe even 4th or 5th class citizens. It was ok to criticize them as individuals and as members of the Negro race. In fact, it was just about politically incorrect to say something nice or respectful about any blacks or speak in their behalf.

The Jewish people were also frowned upon by the general white Christian society in Georgia.

The investigators and the prosecuting attorney did several flip flops between Jewish Leo Frank and Negro Jim Conley.

Finally, a jury convicted Leo Frank of murder and his execution was ordered. Nationwide people were keeping up the trial and it looked like Leo Frank got a raw deal, primarily based on his Judaism.

The bottom of the line is that the Governor of Georgia took away the death sentence and gave Frank life in prison. That caused a big anti-Semitism wave hit Georgia.

Several of Georgia elite politicians of Marietta decided to have a vigilante parade to the Milledgeville State Prison in the middle of the night, where, not a shot was fired, and kidnapped Leo Frank and brought him back to Marietta and lynched him.

Why was Leo Frank lynched in Marietta? I don’t know. Because she used to live in Marietta?

I find it very strange that two young females (Mary Phagan and Jon Bennet Ramsey) were raped and murder decades apart that the ongoing news kept the public’s interest for years were both buried in Marietta, and the crimes happened elsewhere. And people still travel from all over the world to see both graves.

I think the leaders had the power to push the right buttons, which is a dangerous thing to have when you happened to also be blood thirsty which two of the elites were described as being. The book goes in good detail of the Marietta political bosses, and their backgrooudns, who orchestrated it all.

William J. Frey was an ex-Cobb County Sheriff who died the hangman’s noose and owned the property of Frey’s Gin, where Leo Frank was lynched also died by hanging by a hangman’s noose, also made by Frey. He committed suicide years later.

William Smith was the lawyer for the Jim Conley. Years later Smith and his wife bought the famous restaurant The Smith House in Dahlonega, Georgia. The bought it and ran it for a while but was not related to the Smith family that started the business. That is just one of the many little trivia facts in the book.

Now, new confessions show that the people of Marietta probably lynched the wrong man.

It was a very good book. I’m glad I read it. I learned more about Atlanta and my hometown of Marietta.

Mary Phagan c1913