When Mary Phagan was brutally assaulted and murdered in April of 1915, the city was on edge but for differing reasons. Whites in Atlanta felt the injustice of a young girl brutalized and innocence lost, and while I’m sure many others felt this loss as well, the air was thick with fear for everyone else. The early 20th century in the South was the peak of the reign of terror with any wrong action by an ethnic minority being met with mob justice and lynchings. This case felt no different as the police worked to find Phagan’s assailant.
By September a suspect had been convicted and while awaiting sentencing the blood lust of the community led to crowds, which inevitably led to mobs forming outside of the jail. We’ve all heard the story before. Somehow the suspect is no longer in police custody. The crowds grow in size, become louder. A rope hangs ominously from a tree awaiting its victim.
Come morning of August 18, 1915, strange fruit hung from an Atlanta tree, the kind of strange fruit Black people in the state of Georgia were all too familiar with. But this time the victim was not a Black man. Instead, the lifeless and brutalized body of Leo Frank hung from an Atlanta tree. But like many times before, this man was innocent of the crime he had been accused of. Frank was portrayed as the assailant simply because he was Jewish.
America has recently been forced to reckon with its racist past but in doing so, modern concepts of race leave some of America’s worst actions lost to time with Leo Frank’s murder being one of them. Prior to World War II, to be considered White, one had to come from an Anglo-Saxon, Protestant family, preferably a landowning one. And as people migrated to the US, the constraints around claiming a White identity were solidified in legalized discrimination, that oftentimes could lead to consequences as severe as the horrible fate suffered by Leo Frank.
Jewish people, the Irish, Italians, Slavs, the Polish, Hispanics, Asians and others that came to the US hoping for a chance at a better life were instead treated as second class citizens. As we are poised as a country to confront our nation’s history when it comes to African Americans, it is also time to explore how our country has treated religious as well as ethnic minorities.
Expanding the history curriculum in school to discuss topics such as antisemitism, the history of the Irish and Italians, Slavic communities in the US and immigration policies around Asian migration to the United States would not only help inform public policy decisions but also promote empathy and understanding. Structural inequity that has plagued Black communities has also affected descendants from other backgrounds, but these policies have been paved over with America’s new racial system. A tangible step each of us can take is to look to educate ourselves, our children, and to share stories like Leo Frank’s so that their suffering is not in vain and our country can begin to atone for its misdeeds.
Further reading
https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/leo-frank-case/
Ignatiev, N. (2009). How the Irish became white. Routledge.
Lee, E. (2015). The making of Asian America: A history. Simon and Schuster.
Freeman, K.. (2020). No Option but North: The Migrant World and the Perilous Path Across the Border. Ig Publishing.