Black-Jewish Relations on Trial: Leo Frank and Jim Conley in the New South

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Babson College American studies professor Melnick explored the complex relationship between Jews and African Americans in A Right to Sing the Blues (1999). Here, he uses the 1913 Leo Frank murder trial--and the "novels, plays, newspaper accounts, poems, web sites, and songs" that it has inspired--to challenge "the dominant narrative" of black-Jewish relations. These relations, Melnick insists, take place within the context of U.S. racial attitudes; focusing on Frank as a Jewish martyr neglects key aspects of the case. In perhaps the first "trial of the century," and in contemporaneous coverage (particularly that of southern populist Tom Watson), the case pitted Frank, a northern Jewish "boss," against witness Jim Conley, a southern black worker. Both sides used racial stereotypes, but in this case, the stereotypes benefited Conley. Virtually ignored (or vilified) in most recent versions of the story is the victim, Mary Phagan. Melnick draws no conclusion on whodunit, but he urges a more complex and nuanced understanding of what the Frank trial tells us about the past and present. Mary Carroll
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Product Description

An analysis of the Leo Frank case as a measure of the complexities characterizing the relationship between African Americans and Jews in America

In 1915 Leo Frank, a northern Jew, was lynched in Georgia. He had been convicted of the murder of Mary Phagan, a young white woman who worked in the Atlanta pencil factory managed by Frank. In a tumultuous trial in 1913 Frank's main accuser was Jim Conley, an African American employee in the factory. Was Frank guilty?

In our time a martyr's aura falls over Frank as a victim of religious and regional bigotry. The unending controversy has inspired debates, movies, books, songs, and theatrical productions. Among the creative works focused on the case are a ballad by Fiddlin' John Carson, David Mamet's novel The Old Religion in 1997, and Alfred Uhry and Jason Robert Brown's musical Parade in 1998.

Indeed, the Frank case has become a touchstone in the history of black-Jewish cultural relations. However, for too long the trial has been oversimplified as the moment when Jews recognized their vulnerability in America and began to make common cause with African Americans.

This study has a different tale to tell. It casts off old political and cultural baggage in order to assess the cultural context of Frank's trial, and to examine the stress placed on the relationship of African Americans and Jews by it. The interpretation offered here is based on deep archival research, analyses of the court records, and study of various artistic creations inspired by the case. It suggests that the case should be understood as providing conclusive early evidence of the deep mutual distrust between African Americans and Jews, a distrust that has been skillfully and cynically manipulated by powerful white people.

Black-Jewish Relations on Trial is concerned less with what actually happened in the National Pencil Company factory than with how Frank's trial, conviction, and lynching have been used as an occasion to explore black-Jewish relations and the New South. Just as with the O. J. Simpson trial, the Frank trial requires that Americans make a profound examination of their essential beliefs about race, sexuality, and power.

Book Description

An analysis of the Leo Frank case as a measure of the complexities characterizing the relationship between African Americans and Jews in North America

From the Inside Flap

An analysis of the Leo Frank case as a measure of the complexities characterizing the relationship between African Americans and Jews in North America

About the Author

Jeffrey Melnick is assistant professor of American studies at Babson College and author of A Right to Sing the Blues: African Americans, Jews, and American Popular Song.