Leo Frank (1884 - 1948) - Garden after the Spring Rain. Oil on board.

Leo Frank（Austrian, 1884-1948）

Adler im Hochgebirge Eagle in the high mountains Woodcuts in colour 29, 5 x 24 cm via

Hans Frank - Sunlight Through Clouds, color woodcut, 1921.

Leo Frank

Mountain Mist

1930

Around a week ago, there was a reopening of one of two Jewish Broadway shows, it's called Parade, which is the story of the Leo Frank trial and the antisemitism of the 1910s, the trial not only began a protection against antisemitic judges and convictions, but also made the KKK more prominent

Leo Frank was wrongly convicted of the Rape and Murder of a 13 year old girl, Mary Phagan, and was sentenced to a life time in jail after many, MANY failed appeals to his sentence, saying that unless he confessed to the murder, his sentencing would not be reduced from hanging to life in prison, but after his sentencing he was kidnapped and murdered via lyching. This musical is a dramatization of said events. Ben Platt, a Jewish man, said himself he wanted this musical to return.

But as soon as it was opening night Broadway was met with a Neo Nazi protest outside. People giving out false information about Leo to people entering to see the show, and spewing antisemitic propaganda, saying vile things such as "White and blacks united to hang the Jew" and even doing the Nazi salute.

I am spreading the word here before these protests turn into riots. This NEEDS more media attention I cannot stress this enough

Future protection for the actors and audience should be enforced incase these protests go to far. Please reblog this as much as you can and share it with people you know

Thank you

“All the wasted time to never show I loved you so”

I forgot to post this here but HOORAY PARADE WON THE TONY FOR BEST REVIVAL!!!!! Absolutely deserved it’s a beautiful production of a beautiful show

completely forgot to post this a few weeks ago, but i saw parade on broadway with my older sister on 06/23 and made some fanart for it (and the parade account reposted it on instagram !!) so here!!

it was an amazing show, ben platt and micaela diamond were both incredible!!

up there for the "most annoying (i.e. sickening) Twitter trend" is bluechecks attempting to re-litigate three specific long-ago crimes every few months

Leo Frank, George Stinney, and Emmett Till. I like to think there isn't much that actually gets my goat online anymore but watching some doughy asshole who writes for a conservative dark-money blog vehemently argue that the show trial and execution of a child was actually some kind of victory for Law and Order, or watching so-called "historians" excuse the lynching of Leo Frank because of "moral failings" while seeming to grudgingly admit that race played a factor in any of these cases really does cause a particular kind of cold hatred on my end.

ROY MUSTANG.

listening to “it’s hard to speak my heart” from parade and sobbing bc it’s been over a hundred years and we’re slowly slipping back to the cultural conditions that took leo frank’s life.

Things I learned about the Leo Frank case from reading And the Dead Shall Rise by Steve Oney (note: none of this is meant to drag Parade, which I love with all my heart):

-Britt Craig didn’t launch a smear campaign against Leo; he was just the reporter who broke the news of Mary Phagan’s murder (before Leo was considered a suspect).

-“That’s What He Said” is a pretty accurate depiction of Jim Conley’s testimony on how he allegedly acted as Leo’s accomplice and helped him hide Mary’s body in the basement, but before the trial he gave four different versions of the story in affidavits (the police grilled him until he produced a version they were satisfied with).

-I’ve posted about this before, but Leo’s lawyers were racist as fuck. They argued that Jim Conley’s race made him inherently untrustworthy and that “no white man” could have committed such a brutal crime. I’m guessing JRB/Uhry chose not to include this in the musical because it would have made it harder to sympathize with Leo.

-The musical exaggerates the antisemitism that occurred during the trial—not to say there wasn’t any, but incidents like Mary’s mother spitting “Jew” at Leo when she was on the stand are definitely fiction. The most blatant, violent antisemitism arose after the trial, when Northern Jewish-owned newspapers started campaigning to save Leo.

-The unsworn statement Leo made at the trial was nothing like “It’s Hard to Speak My Heart”—he used most of it to explain the work he did at the National Pencil Company on the morning before the murder to convince the jury that his hands were too full to kill Mary, but it probably just made them perceive him as cold and unfeeling.  -Several of the factory girls who testified against Leo did recant their testimony and admit to being coached by Hugh Dorsey, but later they recanted their recantations and claimed they were coerced by William Burns (a private detective working with the defense to clear Leo’s name) into changing their testimony. Of course, Burns denied the accusations and the defense accused the prosecution of bullying the girls into changing their testimony again. So it’s clear that they were bullied by one side or the other, but we’ll probably never know which side.

-Tom Watson was silent on the case until a year after the murder, when a newspaper run by his political rival published an editorial supporting Leo. Also, if you think Watson is evil incarnate in the musical, the real guy’s writings make the musical version look like Mr. Rogers.

-Jim Conley had his own lawyer during the proceedings, William Smith, who came to believe Jim was the actual murderer and played a major role in Governor Slaton’s decision to commute Leo’s sentence to life imprisonment (he also wrote a note on his deathbed professing his belief in Leo’s innocence). 

To sum up: I'd highly recommend this book to any fan of Parade who’s interested in learning more about the case; just don’t read it expecting to find 100% incontrovertible proof of Leo’s innocence. I still believe he was most likely innocent, but I found myself agreeing with Oney’s comment on the last page that “there will never be a resolution to the Frank case,” because it’s a lot murkier than the musical would have people believe.

just saw someone comment on a video of Ben's performance of "This is Not Over Yet" that he seems "too confident" to be playing Leo Frank. My brother in christ...do you know what the song is about? Of course he's confident, he thinks he's about to escape the death penalty. Have you ever even seen Parade or are you just looking for a reason to hate?

Hans Frank - Überschwemmte Wiesen, 1924, color woodcut, 1924.

Leo Frank

Evening Mood (By the River - Mürz)

1922

yep, still love it