And the Dead Shall Rise: The Murder of Mary Phagan and the Lynching of Leo Frank

The 1913 lynching of Leo Frank is one of the most sensational and resonant incidents in U.S. criminal and legal history, and a touchstone of American anti-Semitism. Frank, a Northern Jew, was the manager of an Atlanta, Ga., pencil factory where 13-year-old Mary Phagan worked and was brutally murdered. After he was charged with the crime and arrested, Frank's religion and ethnicity were an unarticulated but central theme of the dramatic, two-year-long trial that garnered worldwide attention. Frank was convicted of Phagan's murder and sentenced to death, but the governor commuted the sentence to life imprisonment. Georgians' anti-Semitism then reached a fever pitch, and Frank was dragged from his prison cell by a lynch mob and hanged near Phagan's hometown.

Since then the Leo Frank case has become an emblem of American intolerance, inspiring a 1937 Hollywood movie, They Won't Forget, and a 1998 Broadway musical, Parade. Surprisingly, though, the Frank case has generated very few works of political or cultural analysis, an exception being Leonard Dinnerstein's The Leo Frank Case, originally published in 1968 and reissued in a slightly revised edition in 1986. Oney's is the best book on the subject to date. Oney, who spent years as a reporter at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, has written not only the definitive account of the murder, trial and lynching but also a stirring, eminently readable, and thrilling narrative.

Oney has read extensively through court transcripts, contemporary newspaper articles, judicial and legal documents, and personal papers, uncovering new and unsettling material, most notably, that the men who planned Frank's lynching—they referred to themselves as the Knights of Mary Phagan—were, or became, very important state politicians. The historical canvas here is broad, and Frank's story becomes a tapestry of American ethnicity, fear, hate and power. Oney carefully maps the history of the Jewish community in the South; the role that New York newspapers played in publicizing the trial and attacking anti-Semitism; and the complex role that racism and the interactions between black and white Georgians played in Frank's conviction. This complex turmoil comes together when, out of the blue, Oney details a suspenseful, beautifully detailed plot twist involving William Smith, the lawyer for the only other suspect, a black man named Jim Conley.

Oney has a reporter's eye for detail and a novelist's sense of storytelling. While the narrative—fashioned as a crime story—is vividly detailed and deeply compelling, we never lose a sense of Oney's exacting accuracy and serious historical intent. This is a vital addition to the literature of race, Jewish studies and Southern history. (Oct.)