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

By Robert Seitz Frey and Nancy Thompson-Frey

Book Overview

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 Frank tells 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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 081541188X
• ISBN13: 9780815411888
• Release Date: February 2002
• Publisher: Cooper Square Press
• Length: 306 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

An important look at two atrocities

When I picked this book up in my school library I was sceptical, I was expecting it to be an over passionate look at some minor blip on the radar of history. I was wrong. 'The Silent and the Damned' brought to light a monstrous double crime and put it in context, without diminishing importance of the case. It details the tragic murder of Mary Phagan, a young factory worker brutally slain in the early 1900s and of Leo Frank, the man unjustly accused of killing her, tried in an atmosphere of anti-Semitism and mob rule, and his subsequent lynching. The book presents the facts of the case with fairness and attention to detail and looks at the case from several angles. This is one of the few books that has made me cry.