He Was Lynched 100 Years Ago for a Crime He Didn't Commit – Who Is Trying to Tarnish His Memory Today?

Thought blood libels were only a part of America's past? Apparently, you've never heard of Leo Frank, the Jew lynched in 1915 for a crime he didn't commit.

Mary Phagan was a 13-year-old girl found dead in the basement of a factory in Atlanta in 1913. Frank, a Jew from a prominent local family, was the supervisor of the factory. In 1915, Frank was tried and convicted of Phagan's murder.

All evidence pointed to an employee of the factory, a Black man named Jim Conley, as the murderer. However, the prosecution chose to overlook the evidence and made Conley the star witness against Frank. The jury bought his colorful stories and convicted Frank, who was seen as an 'industrialist' and thus an opponent of the blue-collar workers.

It was only after the fact that Conley was convicted as an accomplice, spending most of his life in and out of prison. But it was too late for Frank. After being convicted and sentenced to death, Georgia's governor reduced his sentence due to lack of evidence. In a well-planned operation, locals stormed the prison, kidnapped Frank, and lynched him. The prosecutors promised the lynchers would be punished, but none were ever brought to justice. Everyone in Atlanta knew who was responsible, yet these citizens remained respected and popular community members. Shortly after the murder, some of them, along with enthusiastic supporters, held a ceremony to re-establish the local 'Ku Klux Klan' chapter.

More than a hundred years after the lynching, years during which historians unanimously agreed that Leo Frank was an innocent victim of Southern anti-Semitism, the 'Washington Post' reports that American figures—specifically, American neo-Nazi figures—are trying their best to rewrite history, convict Frank, and justify the lynching.

"Leo Frank's case is interesting because you will never meet a neo-Nazi who doesn't know it," says Heidi Beirich, director of the intelligence project at the SPLC, an American organization fighting racism in the South.

Entire neo-Nazi websites have been established to justify Frank's murder. Thousands of original trial documents have been uploaded to these sites, alongside false and misleading interpretations of the facts. the murder of 13-year-old girls, these sites explain, is simply something Jews do. The American Jewish community's reactions to the trial, such as the creation of the 'Anti-Defamation League', are described by these neo-Nazis as: 'the Jewish response to Leo Frank's guilt'.

In addition to clear echoes of the ancient blood libel, these neo-Nazis see in Leo Frank's case proof of Jewish control over the media—since reputable newspapers of the time covered the trial professionally, openly criticizing the baseless manner in which Frank's guilt was determined.

In days when the neo-Nazi movement in America (also known as the alt-right) is growing stronger than ever, the preoccupation with Frank's 'guilt' is also more obsessive than ever. "It's old news, yet it's fake," concludes the Washington Post.