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

Leo Frank, the Musical

LEO FRANK, THE MUSICAL Every retelling of the Frank case is bound to offer, to a greater or lesser degree, the same lesson...The outside world hates Jews and soJews must cling to one another. Samuel G. Freedman In 1998 a musical about the Leo Frank case opened in New York City, with a story by Alfred Uhry (of Driving Miss Daisy fame) and music and lyrics byJason Robert Brown, a relative unknown. When it came time to release the soundtrack for Parade in 1999, Brown was feeling flushed with success: in the notes to the compact disc, Brown recounts in a breathless rush some of the experiences he had while preparing the show. He remembers the "deafening applause" at the final dress rehearsal, and the gratitude he felt when Harold Prince, the legendary producer of the show, called him "the new Gershwin." Finally, he turns maudlin: "Two weeks before the opening, Alfred and I went to Leo Frank's grave in Brooklyn. Neither of us had been to see it the whole time we were writing together, and as we put two rocks on his simple gravestone, I looked down and thought, *I hope we didn't let you down, Leo,' and as I thought it, Alfred said exactly the same thing" (Parade 9). In 1999, to approach Leo Frank is to visit a shrine. For American Jews in particular, Leo Frank is a sort of talisman—a touchstone for Jews interested 3 N 4 Leo Frank, theMusical in reminding themselves that they must, asSamuel G. Freedman notes, "cling to one another." Freedman's 1999 article on Frank culture in such a public forum is startling; few critics—Jewish or otherwise—have been willing to admit that invoking "the memoryof antisemitism serves as a balm for intraJewish tension on such issues as intermarriage, conversion standards and the peace process in Israel. If American Jews still had to worry not only about lynch mobs but the exclusionary policies of law firms, country clubs, choice neighborhoods and Ivy League colleges, as they did for the first half of this century, then they wouldn't get so perversely sentimental about the Frank case." Frank's martyrdomhas been gaining in power over the years. The weirdest of all visions of Frank, probably, was that wrought by Julie Ellis's 1980 romance novel The Hampton Women, in which a young woman, Elizabeth Hampton, becomes passionately involved with Frank's defense effort. In trying to capture the fervor of this young woman's commitment, Ellis basically turns Leo Frank into Sacco and Vanzetti. The internet has multiplied the opportunities for sanctifying Frank: in the late 1990s it was easy to find resources on the Frank case (including various secondary school curriculum kits) put up by educational and civil rights organizations. Most of these web sites reduce the case to a simple story of anti-Jewish prejudice.1 While the musical Parade stands as perhaps the fullest expression of proFrank sentiment, it is important to remember that there was a time when many people thought Frank to be guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. In fact, the first music written about Leo Frank took a much different position than that articulated byJason Robert Brown and Alfred Uhry: when early country singer Fiddlin' John Carson sang three different songs about Frank, starting in public performance in 1913 and continuing on record in the 1920s, he sang of a demon who abused and killed poor Mary Phagan. In between Fiddlin' John's songs and Jason Robert Brown's songs came decades of competition over the meaning of Frank's legacy. But it is the bookends I want to begin with—what I'm calling Leo Frank, The Musical. In this chapter I want to trace how Frank's story and image have been fought over—by Jewish Americans, African Americans, and other Americans —and what these fights have to tell usnot only about LeoFrank but also Leo Frank, the Musical 5 about Black-Jewishrelations (and race and sexuality more broadly) in American culture. Contests over the meaning of the Frank case and the Frank lynching have been fought out since 1915, when soon after Frank's lynching one Frank partisan wrote to Frank's widow, Lucille, to ask her permission to write a photoplay, which might help clear Frank's name. This woman claimed two major points in her favor: she knew David Belasco, the playwright and...