The Silent and the Damned: The Murder of Mary Phagan and the Lynching of Leo Frank [Paperback]

The 1913 murder of 13-year-old Mary Phagan would have far-reaching consequences for Georgia and the nation; in the years that followed a Jewish man named Leo Frank was convicted on dubious evidence, a governor's career toppled while an anti-Semite became Georgia's senator, and the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith was formed.

The Silent and The Damned: The Murder of Mary Phagan and the Lynching of Leo Franktells the horrifying story of how a trial spiraled into mob violence and propaganda campaigns against Jews in the South. The authors, Robert Seitz Frey and Nancy Thompson-Frey, detail the trial that portrayed Frank, the superintendent at the pencil factory where Phagan was employed, as a sexual misfit and killer. The authors describe the responses from and against the Jewish community in Atlanta, and reactions from religious groups and the press across the country.

Frey and Thompson also tell of how new evidence from a witness who stayed silent for years brought the case back under scrutiny in the 1980s, leading to a posthumous pardon for Frank. John Seigenthaler, publisher of the Nashville Tennessean and a leader in the efforts to clear Frank's name, provides the introduction.Robert Seitz Frey is the author of six books, includingOur Future in Light of Twentieth-Century EvilandThe Imperative Response, and has written numerous articles and reviews. He resides in Monkton, Maryland. Nancy C. Thompson, who cowroteThe Imperative Responseand whose articles have appeared inThe Jewish SpectatorandChristian Jewish Relations, lives in Ellicott City, Maryland.The story is so gripping that I literally could not put the book down.The authors are to be commended for this calm, dispassionate, yet chilling story of how bigotry can kill a man and destroy a system of justice.... Must reading!