A group of affluent citizens, with pastors and judges among them, from Marietta, Georgia, Mary Phagan’s hometown, dragged Leo Frank from his cell and hanged him from an oak tree with no police resistance. Pictures were taken of the lynching, and in the photos can be seen some children standing alongside their parents. Some of Frank’s personal possessions were taken and sold as souvenirs. The photos were sold as postcards in local stores and it is estimated that half of Georgia’s Jews fled the state after Leo Frank’s lynching. While it was known who was involved in the lynching, a former governor, a sheriff and other well-placed members of society, their names were not released until the year 2000. In 1986, the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles gave Leo Frank a full pardon. This was prompted by the testimony of Alonzo Mann in 1982 that when he was working as an office boy for Leo Frank, he saw Jim Conley carrying Mary Phagan’s body, and the janitor told Mann he would be killed if he told anyone. The boy’s mother urged him to stay silent.
Even as Frank’s appeal was rejected by the Supreme Court, New York Times publisher Adolph Ochs was moved by the case to expose the realities of anti-Semitism in America. Those who dragged Leo Frank out of prison and lynched him called themselves The Knights of Mary Phagan, a new wave of the Klu Klux Klan which would find its way up north and target immigrants, Catholics and Jews, in addition to blacks. After Leo Frank’s sentencing in 1913, the Bnai Brith chapter in Atlanta sowed the seeds for the Anti-Defamation League. The 1913 charter for the ADL stated, “The immediate object of the League is to stop, by appeals to reason and conscience, and, if necessary, by appeals to law, the defamation of the Jewish People. The ultimate purpose is to secure justice and fair treatment to all citizens alike and to put an end forever to unjust and unfair discrimination against and ridicule of any sect or body of citizens.”
The ADL today has 27 chapters in the US and one in Israel. It has consistently spoken out against anti-Semitic violence and unacceptable statements by high profile individuals that are viewed as depicting Jews in a harsh and negative light. The ADL worked for decades to enable the passage of the Hate Crimes Prevention Act (HCPA).
While America was seen, on the whole, to have less blatant anti-Semitism than Europe, there can be little doubt that every phase of American history contained significant episodes that have negatively impacted Jews. Union Civil War General Ulysses S. Grant attempted to expel the Jews from some portions of Tennessee, Kentucky and Mississippi, until President Abraham Lincoln vetoed the order. In the 20th century, Jews were sometimes denied employment or promotion, were not allowed to join social clubs and were the targets of housing discrimination and quotas for medical and law schools. Popular radio personality Father Coughlin denounced Jews in his radio sermons, and automobile entrepreneur Henry Ford wrote treatises against Jews that got the attention of Adolph Hitler, who wrote glowingly about Ford in Mein Kampf.
The anti-Semitism that rose in the early 20th century as a result of the Populist movement and the belief that Jewish bankers were defrauding the country (at that time, very few Jews were involved in the financial industry) was, according to Richard Hoftstadter, “entirely verbal. It was a mode of expression, rhetorical style, not a tactic or a program. It did not lead to exclusion laws, much less to riots or progroms…” However, he adds that the populist movement generated most of the anti-Semitism in the United States in the early 20th century. In World War I, Jews were depicted as being less eager to join the war effort than non-Jewish Americans, and less patriotic. They were often referred to as “slackers” or “war profiteers.” While anti-Semitism prior to World War I depicted Jews as capitalists, the focus was reversed after the war, and Jews were suspected of Bolshevism and plotting against the government. The notion of Jews as dangerous leftists or “reds” would come to the fore with Senator Joe McCarthy’s frenzied hunt for Communists in the government and the entertainment industry, and the trial of the Julius Ethel Rosenberg, who were executed for treason. While Julius was guilty of passing atomic secrets to Russia, it is widely believed that his wife Ethel knew nothing of his activities and was executed partly as a concession to the anti-Communists, and to some extent, the anti-Semitic zeal that surrounded their trial.
