Opinion, Marietta Daily Journal, Saturday, December 2nd, 1995
Ad
TAGS
Download or edit the free picture Opinion, Marietta Daily Journal, Saturday, December 2nd, 1995 for GIMP online editor. It is an image that is valid for other graphic or photo editors in OffiDocs such as Inkscape online and OpenOffice Draw online or LibreOffice online by OffiDocs.
[Leo Frank Flickr Gallery Curator: Established in 1866, the Marietta Daily Journal is Marietta's oldest and most prominent newspaper in that city located at the perimeter of metro Atlanta Georgia. This article was submitted recently, marking the 25th anniversary of the subset hotbutton topic with respect to the insensitive issue of using a prominent educational street-style sign to push ethnic frictions in the community of Marietta for dominating the narrative of the Frank-Phagan criminal affair. The contention appears to be over whether or not the public should be made aware that evidence presented to the government tribunal of Atlanta between 1982 and 1986 concerning Leo Frank's criminal case, did not rise to the level of warranting his acknowledgement of innocence, when Georgia's pardon and paroles board addressed the issue of his guilt. He was issued a posthumous pardon on a technicality, but that 1986 decision did not officially change the August 25th, 1913, murder trial jury's verdict which included death by hanging. The State of Georgia as of this writing recognizes Leo Frank as being the culprit with malice a forethought with regarding to placing a rope around Mary Phagan's neck and choking her to death.]
In the mid-1990s, there was a firestorm of controversy in the suburbs of metro-Atlanta over the wording on a prominent historical monument-sign that was mounted atop an industrial-strength steel pole of a few feet in height at the Old Marietta City Cemetery. It was placed there to educate visitors about the significance of a grave site of little girl named Mary Anne Phagan (June 1st, 1899 -- April 26, 1913) who had been the rape-murder victim of then-29-years-old pedophile sex-killer name Leo Max Frank (April 17, 1884 -- August 17, 1915). Little Mary Phagan was sexually assaulted by Leo Frank at minutes past noon on April 26, 1913, he presumably strangled her to death so that she would be unable to report to the police and her family the incident of aggravated sodomy. To throw the dogs off the trail of where and how she had been slain, Leo Frank saw to it that her body was mutilated, by dragging it 140-feet across the hard earthen-floor of the National Pencil Company's basement.
The Old Marietta City Cemetery, Marietta, Georgia, USA.
The young girl was interred in a grave at this historic 19th century founded burial park on Tuesday, April 28th, 1913, with several hundred community members, journalists and spectators present at the time. She became a symbol of the pain and suffering that many kids of poverty had to endure as child laborers working 55 to 60 hour work-weeks in Atlanta's industrial sweatshops and mills.
Mary Phagan's Grave
A tombstone at the head of her burial plot was donated by Confederate Veterans June 25th, 1915, and in 1933 a grave-top marble slab inscribed with indelible word was placed over her grave. the engraving of the epitaph was something written decades ago by a former U.S. Congressman from Georgia, Tom Watson, who had passed away in 1922.
The highly visible plaque was placed just a stone's throw away from Phagan family plot, which is a popular tourist attraction because of the notoriety of the true-crime.
The First Version of the Sign was This:
Here is the words for First Sign which supposedly is in Marietta History Museum
Mary Phagan
Celebrated in song as "Little Mary Phagan" after her murder on Confederate Memorial Day, 1913, in Atlanta. Grave marked by CSA veterans in 1915. Tribute by Tom Watson set 1933. Leo Frank, sentenced to hang, granted clemency before lynching August 17, 1915. His 1986 pardon is based on States's failure to protect him/apprehend killers, not Frank's innocence.
--End of Sign Text.
Notice the first version of the Mary Phagan sign clarifies that Leo Frank was posthumously pardoned on a technicality, not because there was evidence of his innocence. Members of the Jewish community and Jewish members of the city counsel of Marietta were not happy with this accurate clarification. It let the public know that Leo Frank was still officially guilty and this was a major setback for the fact they had been building an artificial consensus in the media and academy over many generations that Leo Frank was innocent--wrongfully convicted, not actually guilty, even though he was duly convicted for the Phagan rape-murder.
The Anti-Defamation League of Bnai Brith, Atlanta Jewish Federation and American Jewish Community spent enormous financial resources on lawyers, back room wheeling an dealing, and political bullying to get Leo Frank posthumously pardoned, but it was an embarrassing setback because the Georgia Board of Pardon's and Paroles was clear in their decision that they were not addressing the issue of his guilt or innocent, thereby making his default position of guilt, maintained officially.
At the time, the family of Mary Phagan contested the machinations of the local Jewish community who were using the imprimatur of the local government for pushing the broader and manufactured consensus on the Leo M. Frank true-crime affair, that he was innocent--wrongfully convicted. Since 1913, the Leo Frank case has been a cause celebre of the Jewish community, who have been agitating in the media, academy and government for his eventual vindication.
Here is the text of the second iteration of the sign:
Celebrated in song as "Little Mary Phagan" after her murder at age 13 on April 26, 1913 in Atlanta. The trial and conviction of Leo Frank were controversial, as was the commutation of his death sentence four days before confederate veterans marked her grave on June 25, 1915. He was abducted from prison and lynched [on] August 17, 1915. In 1986, he was issued a pardon.
--end of the second iteration of the sign.
The people of Marietta, especially its veteran citizens of the military considered the city counsel's change a "PSYOP" - "PSYchological OPeration" of sneaky subtle linguistic manipulation through the use of the local government's gravitas. In less verbose words, members of the Jewish community were using its coreligionist city counsel members to hold meetings behind closed doors (when those meetings should have been public) to change the historical message on the said plaque. With little to no notice, they changed the plaque without the knowledge of the local populace, and it was only when people noticed the change, was a protest launched.
The contention which arose at the time was over the changing statement of the marker (a prior version was replaced with new contrived text) and what it communicated to the populace was an attempt to play on the naivety of the public.
The descendants of the murder victim Mary Phagan, were incensed because the wording presented to the public was using political trickery and social deception on behalf of the Jewish community who have been promoting the racist falsehood that the White man Leo Frank was innocent of sexually assaulting and strangling to death Mary Phagan, and Jim Conley, an African-American man was the real culprit.
Members of the Jewish community were unhappy with the first version of the plaque, because it provided factual information that Leo Frank was not officially exonerated or absolved by the State of Georgia for his crime of sexually assaulting and strangling to death 13-years old Mary Anne Phagan (1899-1913). So they changed the words to only say he was issued a pardon, because most people think that if someone is pardoned it means they are no longer guilty of the crime, when in fact the Georgia Board of Pardon's and Paroles, stated the 1986 posthumous pardon of Leo Frank essentially did not officially absolve him of the Mary Phagan murder.
Residents of the city, want to remain anonymous, because ADL was prominent in pressuring the political leadership of the Atlanta government to posthumously pardon Leo Frank, when the pardon itself was illegal, he was not alive to receive it and a pardon requires that a person be alive to accept or deny it.
Anonymous long-time members of the community agree the sign change was done for dishonest and divisive purposes, without dialogue among diverse community members of different faiths, ethnicity and backgrounds, "It was just done in our opinion to dupe the public into believing Frank was innocent and signifies that the Jewish Community will do anything to accomplish their goal/erase history!" This was the prevailing feeling. Sometimes the members of the Jewish community have zero self-reflection when it comes to sensitive matters, they call it Chutzpah, we call it insolence.
This event is one of the silent indignities the Gentile citizens of Marietta have to deal with in regards to the Jewish community forcing a fabricated consensus down the throats of Georgians since 1913, with Atlanta and Marietta, being the epicenter of this ethnocentric bigotry and political bullying over the slaying of the teenage girl and the post-judicial hanging of the man who was proven to be the perp who snuffed out her life in its early flowering.
Newspaper Article Ref:
Marietta Daily Journal, Saturday, December 25, 1995.
Transcription as follows:
Family of Mary Phagan protests marker change
Without a formal vote and with the press absent, Marietta City Council has changed the inscription on the city's historic marker at the grave of rape-murder victim Mary Phagan in the Marietta City Cemetery. The Phagan family is blaming Councilman Philip Goldstein.
The descendants of Miss Phagan are upset because the family was not notified before or after the change, and only learned of it on a cemetery-cleaning visit. The family says the newly-placed marker - which sits on a city-maintained path near the grave and is not to be confused with Miss Phagan's ornate tombstone, which makes no mention of the circumstances of her death - omits the reason for the 1986 posthumous pardon given Leo Frank.
Frank - Miss Phagan's boss - was convicted in 1913 by a Fulton Superior Court jury of the 13-year-old girl's murder in an Atlanta pencil factory and sentenced to hang. When Gov. John Slaton commuted Frank's sentence to life in 1915, a group of Marietta men abducted Frank from the state prison near Milledgeville and lynched him near what is now the Big Chicken on Frey's Gin Road in Marietta.
The Phagan family initially opposed placing a marker at their ancestor's grave, fearing there would be increased damage to the cemetery plot and curiosity seekers would leave graffiti. That hasn't happened. Late Mayor Joe Mack Wilson told east Cobb resident and Cherokee County special education teacher Mary Phagan Keen, a great-niece of Mary Phagan, that the grave was the most sought by visitors to Marietta and should have a marker, along with several other notable graves in the cemetery.
Mayor Wilson told the Phagan family the city would let them approve the text of the marker. The family insisted the unusual conditions of Frank's 1986 pardon be explained. That was done. Now controversy has arisen because that portion of the marker has been changed.
The Georgia Pardons and Parole Board in 1983 turned down a request for a pardon based on Frank's alleged innocence. Frank's former office boy, Alonzo Mann, told two Nashville Tennessean newsmen he saw black janitor Jim Conley holding a limp body in his arms the day of the murder. In its 1983 denial of a pardon for Frank, the board said after Mann's testimony it "did not find conclusive evidence proving beyond any doubt that Frank was innocent."
A new parole board then granted Frank a pardon in 19896 on the grounds the state did not protect him in prison, thereby allowing him to be lynched and thus ending any further court appeals. Frank's conviction was appealed unsuccessfully by his lawyers three times to the Georgia Supreme Court and twice to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The 1986 pardon said: "Without attempting to address the question of guilt or innocence, and in recognition of the state's failure to protect the person of Leo M. Frank and thereby preserve his opportunity for continued legal appeal of his conviction, and in recognition of the state's failure to bring his killers to justice, and as an effort to heal old wounds...the board hereby grants to Leo M. Frank a pardon." The family opposed the 1986 pardon, and now is irked at the council and Goldstein.
"We are as much a victim as the family of Leo Frank," said Ms. Keen. For 80 years, we have been the object of the curosity[sic]-seekers and subjected to unfair and untrue books and TV docudramas. The current council didn't show the same respect to us as did Mayor Wilson and a previous council." Ms. Keen's father, James Ph
Free picture Opinion, Marietta Daily Journal, Saturday, December 2nd, 1995 integrated with the OffiDocs web apps
