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Class Date: April 15th, 9:30am
Location: Your couch! See your weekly e-mail for Zoom link!
The Trial
The Trial
This week we’re looking at the case of Leo Frank. He was charged with the murder of a young factory worker, but anti-Semitism influenced the case and the subsequent lynching. But before we get there, let’s look at some background of the time:
1654 - First known settlement of Jews in American colonies
A group of mostly Sephardi refugees arrived in the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam from Brazil, which expelled its Jews that year after Portuguese conquest. The Dutch governor attempted to have them removed, but the Dutch West India enforced tolerance in favor of economic benefits of more mercantiles operating in the colony.
1740 - Naturalization laws include Jewish residents
Legal status was granted to Jewish and Protestant residents in the colonies. Europe would not recognize Jewish residents as citizens for another 50 years. By the time of the Revolution, five small Jewish settlements dotted the Atlantic coast.
1866 - Civil Rights Act
The first federal law recognizing the definition of citizenship and extending equal protection to all citizens. The main goal of the Act was to protect civil rights for recently freed Black people living in the United States in the wake of the Civil War. President Andrew Johnson vetoed the act, but a ⅔ majority in each chamber overrode the veto to pass the Act. While the act made it illegal to discriminate against Black citizens, enforcement has historically been difficult to secure.
1866 - White mob attacks Louisiana Constitutional Convention
Frustrated that the Louisiana Constitution did not extend voting rights to Black people, Progressive Republicans, with a mix of Black and white men, convened a convention to discuss reform. After the meeting, they met a group of Black marchers with a band. An armed group of whites set on the group, ultimately killing approximately 50 people, almost all of them Black.
1883 - Civil Rights Cases
5 legal cases were combined by the Supreme Court (due to their similarity). The Court ruled that the Civil Rights Act of 1875 was unconstitutional. The Court held that the 13th and 14th Amendments did not allow Congress to outlaw racial discrimination by private individuals. Effectively, this ruling gave Congress very little power to legislate against segregation. It paved the way for decades of Jim Crow laws and inequality.
1886 - Samuel Gompers founds the American Federation of Labor
A variety of small craft unions united under the leadership of Samuel Gompers to form the American Federation of Labor (AFL). The AFL gave each of the more 100 unions in the organization ‘exclusive jurisdiction’ over a craft. They did not engage in national political issues, but focused on collective bargaining for wages, benefits, hours, and working conditions.
1881 - Tuskegee University founded
The beginning of this Historically Black Colleges and University (HBCU) can actually be credited to Lewis Adams, a formerly enslaved man, who never received a day of formal education, though he could read and write. W.F. Foster was running for Alabama Senate reelection and asked Adams to help him with the support of the Black community. Instead of asking for money, Adams asked that Foster help establish an educational institution for the Black population. To read more about this and how they recruited Booker T. Washington to teach at the Institute, click here:
https://www.tuskegee.edu/explore/History-and-Mission.html
1891 - First convention of the World’s Women’s Christian Temperance Movement
Women, tired of husbands and sons using much needed family funds to support their drinking habits, organized beginning in 1873. They asked owners of saloons to stop selling alcohol to their husbands and sons. The women were temporarily successful at ridding 250 villages and towns of liquor for a short while. However, when sales resumed, women organized into the National Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. The group circulated “The Petition”, asking world leaders to stand against alcohol traffic and opium trading and it made its first public appearance at a convention in Boston.
1892 - Muir establishes the Sierra Club
After successfully campaigning for the protection of Yosemite, John Muir turned his focus to protecting more natural spaces from the fast pace of industrialization and expansion. He established the Sierra Club to advocate for natural spaces. However, Muir’s advocacy for preservation wasn’t necessarily for all to enjoy. Very much a product of his time, Muir saw many, including indigenous peoples and African Americans, as not worthy of having access to natural spaces or their ancestral homelands. To read about how the Sierra Club is grappling with the racist origins of some of its work, check out this Smithsonian article here: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/sierra-club-grapples-founder-john-muirs-racism-180975404/
1901 - American League of Major League Baseball declares itself a Major League
After one season as a minor league stemming from the minor WEstern League in 1899, ALMLB declares itself a Major League. Their eight charter teams were the Baltimore Orioles, Boston Americans, Chicago White Sox, Cleveland Blues, Detroit Tigers, Milwaukee Brewers, Philadelphia Athletics, and Washington Senators. 1901 was the first year of competition, competing against the senior National circuit.
1905 - The Niagara Movement begins
A group of Black intellectuals, including W.E.B. Du Bois and William Monroe Trotter, formed an organization to call for civil and political rights for African Americans. The organization served as a front runner for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the civil rights movement. To read more about this group, please click here: https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/niagara-movement
1913 - Federal Segregation begins
President Woodrow Wilson, newly inaugurated, began implementing a policy of racial segregation across the federal government. A Southerner himself, he had appointed several segregationists to his Cabinet and they were eager to separate employees along racial lines. This action would prove to have far reaching consequences, especially on the economic development of the Black community. To read more about this program and these effects, click here: https://theconversation.com/segregation-policies-in-federal-government-in-early-20th-century-harmed-blacks-for-decades-145669
That is where our timeline leaves us for this week! Check below for additional reading resources!
Recommended Reading
Recommended Reading
To read more about this period, here are some great books to get you started:
Heroes of American Jewish History by Deborah Karp
Discusses the difficulties of Jewish immigrants and presents biographical sketches of well-known Jews in American history.
Choose Your Path: Adventures in American Jewish History by Shoshana Hantman
2018 SILVER MEDALIST, INDEPENDENT PUBLISHERS AWARD — Why is stepping back in time important? Because Jews have a shared history. This shared history is part of what makes us Jewish. The challenges and choices of your grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ generation, trying to find their way in the world, is an important part of the American Jewish experience. Experience it with them. You are the main character in every chapter in this book, and how the stories end will depend on the decisions you make along the way.
For adults:
And The Dead Shall Rise: The Murder of Mary Phagan and the Lynching or Leo Frank by Steve Oney
In 1913, 13-year-old Mary Phagan was found brutally murdered in the basement of the Atlanta pencil factory where she worked. The factory manager, a college-educated Jew named Leo Frank, was arrested, tried, and convicted in a trial that seized national headlines. When the governor commuted his death sentence, Frank was kidnapped and lynched by a group of prominent local citizens.
Steve Oney’s acclaimed account re-creates the entire story for the first time, from the police investigations to the gripping trial to the brutal lynching and its aftermath. Oney vividly renders Atlanta, a city enjoying newfound prosperity a half-century after the Civil War, but still rife with barely hidden prejudices and resentments. He introduces a Dickensian pageant of characters, including zealous policemen, intrepid reporters, Frank’s martyred wife, and a fiery populist who manipulated local anger at Northern newspapers that pushed for Frank’s exoneration.
The Leo Frank Case by Leonard Dinnerstein
The events surrounding the 1913 murder of the young Atlanta factory worker Mary Phagan and the subsequent lynching of Leo Frank, the transplanted northern Jew who was her employer and accused killer, were so wide ranging and tumultuous that they prompted both the founding of B’nai B’rith’s Anti-Defamation League and the revival of the Ku Klux Klan. The Leo Frank Case was the first comprehensive account of not only Phagan’s murder and Frank’s trial and lynching but also the sensational newspaper coverage, popular hysteria, and legal demagoguery that surrounded these events.
Forty years after the book first appeared, and more than ninety years after the deaths of Phagan and Frank, it remains a gripping account of injustice. In his preface to the revised edition, Leonard Dinnerstein discusses the ongoing cultural impact of the Frank affair.
Works Cited
Works Cited
https://www.library.illinois.edu/hpnl/tutorials/antebellum-newspapers-introduction/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Associated_Press
https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/newsboys-strike/
https://www.britannica.com/topic/American-Federation-of-Labor-Congress-of-Industrial-Organizations
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Hull-House
https://connecticuthistory.org/ida-tarbell-the-woman-who-took-on-standard-oil/
https://www.openmarketsinstitute.org/timeline
https://www.lareviewofbooks.org/article/children-dammed-st-francis-dam-disaster/
https://www.infoplease.com/history/world/1800-1899-ad-world-history
https://www.ushistory.org/declaration/revwartimeline.html
https://antisemitism.adl.org/antisemitism-in-american-history/
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