James Allen’s collection of
images for his anthology “Without Sanctuary: Photographs and Postcards of
Lynching in America”, while being profoundly disturbing, offers an interesting
opportunity to examine the acts of racism, prejudice, violence and terrorism
that occurred in our nation’s recent history. The images below, both of which
were found on printed postcards, depict the highly publicized lynching of Leo
Max Frank in August of 1915. The trial of Leo Frank is considered by many to be
one of the most celebrated court battles of the twentieth century due to the
fact that the cased called into question issues of anti-Semitism, lynching and
general violence that were rampant during this time. Moreover, the case became
incredibly polarizing as it played with the notion of religious freedom and
acceptance during a time when Christianity was commonly viewed as the nation’s religion.
Frank,
a young Jewish-American factory superintendent living in the thick of the
Georgia countryside, was arrested for the murder of a young factory employee by
the name of Mary Phagan in the spring of 1913. Minimal evidence was found
linking Frank to the murder, however, it is widely accepted that anti-Semitism
and racial/ religious profiling played into his conviction. As Allen described
in his notes on the images, “[Frank partook in] a grotesquely engineered trail
[which] led to [his] conviction and sentence of death by hanging. After the
communication of his death sentence. Frank was transferred, for his own safety”(Allen
176). The mention of his transfer hints at the media coverage and national
attention the Frank case was receiving by suggesting that the news could spur
potential action. Moreover, the order for transfer highlights a fear, concern
or simple acknowledgement of the threat of vigilante action and mob violence by
law officials of the time. Despite the attempt to protect Frank by moving him
off-site, a gang of Marietta’s most hate-filled citizens banded together to
lynch Frank on the evening of August 16th. As Allen writes, “a gang of some twnty-five
men, some of Marietta, Georgia’s ‘best citizens’, wearing goggles and hats
pulled down low, pulled Frank from a hospital bed… placed him, feeble,
undressed, and handcuffed, in one of four waiting cars… intending to hand him
over the monument of Mary Phagan.” (Allen 176).
When
analyzing the images of Franks murder, it is important to comment on the text
that has been imposed over the image that reads “The End of Leo Frank”. The
rhetoric in that sentence seems to suggest a notion of closure that is meant to
accompany the image for any receiver of this card. Declaring this the “End of
Leo Frank” rather than the “murder”, or the “dehumanization”, suggests that his
end brings with it a certain level of peace. In Allen’s notes on the postcard,
he notes that the photos of this lynching were widely consumed and sold outside
the undertaking establishment in Marietta that his body had been taken to. This
fact, while rather vague and interpretable, seems to suggest that the owners of
the establishment did not lose much sleep over profiting off the unlawful
murder of a seemingly innocent man. While the Leo Frank case spurred much
controversy and became a focal point of the national discourse, opinions on the
matter were relatively uniform in the South so it is not all that surprising
that his death would be commoditized. Another interesting point worth
mentioning about the photographs is the amount of spectators that were included
in the images. To me, this served as a symbol of the lynch mob culture that
existed in Southern American culture during and throughout the 18th,
19th and 20th centuries. The rather unaffected and
sometimes cheerful faces that dot the images are in many ways deeply disturbing
and speak to the widespread acceptance of the brutal and barbaric practice of
lynching.
