Lynching of Leo Frank
In 1913, a Jew in Atlanta named Leo Frank was convicted for the rape and murder of Mary Phagan, a 13-year-old Christian girl in his employ. Frank was sentenced to death but Governor Slaton, convinced by a review of the evidence that Frank was innocent, commuted the sentence to life imprisonment. As a result of public outrage over this act, a Georgia mob kidnapped Frank from prison and lynched him.
In response to the lynching of Leo Frank, Sigmund Livingston founded the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) under the sponsorship of B'nai B'rith. The ADL became the leading Jewish group fighting anti-Semitism in the United States. The lynching of Leo Frank coincided with and helped spark the revival of the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan disseminated the view that anarchists, communists and Jews were subverting American values and ideals.
Read more about this topic: History Of The Jews In The United States
Famous quotes containing the words lynching, leo and/or frank:
“... lynching was ... a woman’s issue: it had as much to do with ideas of gender as it had with race.”
—Paula Giddings (b. 1948)
“Leo: What was she, a TV groupie? A hooker?
Rob: No, she was not a TV groupie, or a hooker. She’s a cellist. A very funny, pretty, interesting, intelligent, fabulous, vivacious cellist.
Leo: Oh yeah, well, you’d better not see her again.”
—Jonathan Reynolds, screenwriter. Leo (Richard Mulligan)
“I must work, so as not to be a fool, to get on, to become a journalist, because that’s what I want!... I can’t imagine that I would have to lead the same sort of life as Mummy ... and all the women who do their work and are then forgotten. I must have something besides a husband and children, something that I can devote myself to!”
—Anne Frank (1929–1945)