Photo: NIKLAS HALLE’N / AFP / Getty Images
Next to the body of Mary Phagan were two small notes purporting to blame of the crime to Newt Lee, the night watchman of the factory.
Lee was arrested, but it quickly became clear that the notes were a crude attempt by a barely literate Jim Conley to cover up his own involvement. Conley was the factory janitor, a black man, and a known drunk.
Conley then decided to blame Leo Frank, the factory’s Jewish owner, despite the absurdity of the claims, they took hold.
Frank was tried by Judge Leonard Roan, who allowed the blatantly unfair trial to go ahead even after Conley’s attorney told him privately his client had admitted Frank’s innocence on more than one occasion.
The trial was full of Watson’s fans and readers of his racist paper, the Jeffersonian. The jury was terrified into a conviction despite the total lack of evidence against Frank.
Georgia Governor John Slaton launched his own investigation and quickly concluded that Frank was completely innocent. Three weeks before his term was up, Slaton commuted Frank’s death sentence in the hope that he would eventually be released when the publicity died down. However, Watson had other plans: he mobilized his followers to form the Knights of Mary Phagan.
Thousands of Jewish residents in Atlanta were forced to flee the city because the police refused to arrest the lynch mob.
Mary Phagan’s Knights then headed to the prison farm where Frank was imprisoned. They handcuffed the mayor and guards and kidnapped Frank, taking him to Marietta, Phagan’s hometown. There he was hanged to death from a giant oak.
Thousands of spectators came to observe and photograph themselves in front of his lifeless body. The police did nothing to stop the show.
Although most of the country was outraged and horrified by the lynching, Watson remained very popular in Georgia. In fact, he was elected to the United States Senate in 1920.
Frank did not receive a posthumous pardon until 1986, arguing that his lynching deprived him of his right to appeal his conviction.
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