Antisemitic protests occurred outside Bernard B Jacobs Theatre on Tuesday night, which is home to Broadway’s Parade musical. The performance is based on the death of Leo Frank, but who was he?
Antisemitic protestors reportedly from the National Socialist Movement paraded outside Bernard B Jacobs Theatre, New York last night, hurling slurs and accusations against Parade musical’s main character, Leo Frank.
The location was the first performance of the Broadway revival of Parade – a show about the true story of Leo Frank, a Jewish man who was convicted of the murder of a 13-year-old girl in 1913.
In video footage captured by Jake Wasserman, an editor at the Jewish publication, The Forward, protestors can be heard criticizing the performance of “romanticizing” his alleged crimes. In the years since the case, however, Leo Frank is suspected to have been innocent.
Who was Leo Frank, the subject of Broadway’s Parade musical?
Born April 17, 1884, Frank was a Jewish-American factory superintendent from Texas.
After gaining a mechanical engineering degree from Cornell University, he relocated to Atlanta, where he became the director at the National Pencil Company.
On April 27, 1913 the body of a 13-year-old girl named Mary Phagan was found in the basement of the pencil factory by African-American night watchman Newt Lee. She worked at the company, where was sexually assaulted and brutally murdered.
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Authorities initially suspected Lee as the offender as the two notes left by Phagan’s body mentioned a “black night witch”, but he was eventually abandoned as a culprit.
Frank became a suspect after several other employees alleged they had seen him flirting with females at the factory.
By August 24. 1013, he was convicted of Phagan’s murder and sentenced to death by hanging. After various appeals, the punishment was commuted to life imprisonment after the governor of Georgia, John Slaton, believed his innocence as there was sufficient new evidence not available at the original trial to prove Frank’s claim.
Photo: Getty Images
Leo Frank was lynched by abductors
Slaton’s decision sparked outrage in Georgia, forcing him to flee the state. A lynch mob of 25 men, from Phagan’s hometown of Marietta, planned to kidnap Frank from prison.
On August 16, 1915, he was abducted and hanged in the direction facing Phagan’s home. 71 years after his death, the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles pardoned Frank, reportedly because the lynching deprived him of his right to further appeal.
Some reports claim it occurred after the testimony of an office boy, who had allegedly seen the factory’s janitor – Jim Conley – carrying Phagan’s body. Conley is widely believed to have been the real perpetrator ever since. He admitted during the initial investigation that he had written the notes discovered by the victim’s body, but insisted that Frank instructed him to do so.
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