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Transcript of "The Leo Frank Case: On the Screen and in the Brandeis Archives"
CAROL KERN: I'm Carol Kern, co-chairing Honoring our History along with Judy Levine. Welcome and thank you for joining us today for our event on The Leo Frank Case hosted by the Brandeis National Committee. The BNC's current campaign, Honoring our History, is not just the title for a campaign. It brings to mind why Brandeis was started in 1948 with the founding principles of social justice, equal opportunities for minorities when there was a quota system, as well as the principles of academic excellence and service to the community. When the Brandeis University National Women's committee, now the Brandeis National Committee officially started in 1948 as well, our organization was called upon to help build a fledgling library at the university and we successfully heeded that call. That was our history and today, through Honoring our History campaign, it is the future. By preserving social justice collections through digitizing them, they become accessible to students, scholars, researchers worldwide, making them an important instrument of learning so that the many injustices of the past may not be repeated again. In light of increasing anti-Semitism, restrictions on immigration, and institutional sexism, the unique collections housed at the university library that addressed social justice topics are ever more important. We are living in a new world of learning through technology as we take part in zoom meetings, webinars, and by simply pulling out our cell phones to look up something we want to find out about. But what if some of these documents, important to us, simply disappear through the aging process.
JUDY LEVINE: Thank you, Carol. My name is Judy Levine, and in my home in the back of a closet, there's a cardboard box filled with aging photographs. In my family, I was the one who inherited my mother's photo albums. Unfortunately, with the passing of time, these albums deteriorated and the photos faded. I can't even identify so many of the people in the photos. Who are they and what would their stories? If I could go back in time, I would have asked those important questions about my family history. Now, they are lost forever. There is a saying, "He who does not learn from history is doomed to repeat it." That is why the Brandeis social justice collections are so important. In today's webinar, we will learn about the fate of Leo Frank, his ordeal and trial through his letters. Let us make sure that these documents, along with the other one of a kind research collections, will be preserved through the digitalization process so that there will be a record of history for future generations to learn from. At this time, it is our pleasure to introduce our speakers for today. Thomas Doherty, professor of American Studies and Sarah Shoemaker, associate university librarian for archives and special collections at Brandeis. Professor Doherty will examine the rich history of motion, motion picture representations of a Leo Frank case, focusing especially on the governor John M. Stack, Episode of Profiles in Courage telecast on December 20th, 1964. Sarah Shoemaker will provide an on-camera look at the original materials into Leo Frank trial collection, including letters written by Leo Frank from prison, papers and petitions related to Governor Slaton and more. This event is being recorded and can be viewed at a later time in our virtual events library on the Brandeis website. There are a lot of exciting virtual events taking place throughout the fall from Brandeis. So please be sure to check your e-mail for the weekly virtual programming e-newsletter and on our social media. Lastly, we encourage you to send us questions using the question/answer button at the bottom of your screen. We will leave time at the end of the talk for Tom and Sarah to address some of your questions. Thank you, Tom.
THOMAS DOHERTY: Okay. Well, I think I'm up first, so let me make sure we have our visual here. All right, from beginning. Hi, I'm Tom Doherty and I'm really happy to be here with Sarah, Carol and Judy and I want to thank you for the kind introduction. You can all see this PowerPoint, I hope? I thought it might be useful at the very beginning to just give a broad overview of the Leo Frank Case and then what I want to do, because there are so many ways you can look into this case is focus especially on the motion picture legacy of the Leo Frank Case. But I think also how motion pictures really did influence, I think what happened in Georgia in 1915. This is the rough timeline here. I think you can look at this yourself whenever you.
DANIA KHANDAKER: Tom hasn't shared the your attribute.
THOMAS DOHERTY: I'm sorry, but.
DANIA KHANDAKER: Your PowerPoint. Yeah. What about it? You can't see it.
DANIA KHANDAKER: Do you think you can share it again because some of us we can't see.
THOMAS DOHERTY: All right. Let me try to share it again here. I'm sorry. I'm having trouble with this. I am sorry, I having trouble. I don't know what the.
DANIA KHANDAKER: That's okay about legal just like.
THOMAS DOHERTY: I'm not sure what the problem is here now. So you can't see it.
DANIA KHANDAKER: We can't see the PowerPoint. We were able to see it a brief or I know you had done share screen at the bottom
THOMAS DOHERTY: Don't know what's going on. Sorry.
DANIA KHANDAKER: Sarah, do you think maybe would you like to go ahead or we can go to Thomas' PowerPoint?
SARAH SHOEMAKER: Somebody suggests you stop sharing, and try sharing again, Tom.
THOMAS DOHERTY: Let me just share screen. How about that? Can you see it now?
JUDY LEVINE: Yes, we can see it now. Excellent.
THOMAS DOHERTY: Okay. It's very typical. This is the timeline that I was trying to show you previously about the Leo Frank case, which erupts in Georgia in 1913, and I guess comes to a certain dreadful climax in 1915, two years later. As I was saying earlier, I never want to be the kind of person who reads you the PowerPoint. You can go over this yourself, I think, and gets some of the main points to this two-year case. Like any true crime case, you can still get an argument about most of the incidents in the case. But I think most people drawing upon these three books. These are just three of the more popular volumes addressing the case, which has been a perennial source of scholarly fascination since 1913. I think that Leo Dinnerstein book is probably the one that was the big shot across the bow in terms of introducing this case to a new generation, and there's been just a wealth of critical, and scholarly material on its sense. No history of the American Jewish experience in the 20th century would ever overlooked the Leo Frank case because there is so much material on it, and so many different ways of looking at it. I'm telescoping down to maybe talk a little bit about the motion picture legacy as I was saying, that not only has Leo Frank Case inspired a surprising amount of motion pictures, either explicitly about the Frank Case or allegorically about the Frank Case, but it is also I believe, something that that motion pictures itself influenced it. I wouldn't argue that the legal frame may never have been lynched without motion pictures. But certainly what was going on cinematically in America in 1915, I think, helped incite the population of Georgia to do what they did. There are all kinds of ways to look at the case as I said. True crime angle is the one that we all love, and that's sort of a who killed Mary Phagan story. Then the other kind, and I think this is where almost all the scholarly and critical action is, because most of us, I think, believe that Leo Frank was innocent. The scholarly material overwhelmingly supports that, and believes that Jim Conley the janitor in the pencil factory was the actual perpetrator of the murder of Mary Phagan. So the action then becomes not who killed Mary Phagan, but why Leo Frank became the receptacle for this hysterical outbursts of hatred in 1913-1915. And there are all kinds of answers for that. Racial, religious, regional, economic. The one I want to focus on, because as a film scholar who sort of delved into true crime, I became really intrigued with the fact that the Leo Frank Case, and the arguably the most important picture and American Motion Picture History happened at the same time, and they actually end up inciting the same resurgence, that is of the Ku Klux Klan in 1915. This is a film that I think most of you have heard of. If you've taken a film class at Brandeis University with me, you've been required to see it because it's racist and hallucinatory. As the film is one of the most important films in American history, maybe arguably the most important or just the film that is usually credited with making the feature length motion picture, the flagship product of classical Hollywood cinema. It was the first film that really orchestrated the full elements of film grammar into a dramatic action adventure that moved people in a way that great theater or great literature did at the time. And the responses to this film are usually stunned that emotion picture could do this, that we had seen in the first part of the 20th century slapstick, and we'd been excited and had some laughs cinema. But we hadn't, hadn't experience in America until The Birth of a Nation. I think it's true for most people that was it akin to the best literature on the best theater. Now, when we look at, of course, the problematic part of it is that is an utter racist hallucination about the Civil War, and the reconstruction. Now what The Birth of a Nation does, and I think this really helps explain what's going on in the Leo Frank Case, is a series of celebrations of certain myths and a recapitulation dramatically of certain myths that are going to have a terrible impact on Leo Frank in 1913, the method that confederacy and especially what was called at the time, the Flower of Southern Womanhood, how the virginal Southern woman is sort of the receptacle for all that the Confederacy means, all that the Deep South means. And this is dramatized most. This is just to give you an idea of the continuity of this myth in American culture. It always strikes me as interesting that probably the two most popular films in America in the 20th century are both about the Civil War and its aftermath, both from the Southern point of view, and both of course racist. Hallucinations although Gone With the Wind is not quite as hallucinatory as Birth of a Nation. I have an African-American film scholar friend who calls Gone With the Wind, The Birth of a Nation. White phrase, alike. The narrative of Birth of a Nation would have been known to every white Southerner in the early part of the 20th century as promulgated by this rapidly racist charismatic preacher playwright named Thomas Dixon. He wrote a trilogy of books celebrating the Ku Klux Klan, and celebrating the mythos of the Confederacy. These books were huge bestsellers. He gave dramatic readings of them across the country. He wrote plays that were performed across the country. Huge hits not just throughout the South, but in New York and on Broadway. So every Southerner in 1913 would have known the basic outlines of this story. And they would have also been waiting for the film in 1915. So even though Birth of a Nation did not come to Atlanta until December 1915, several months after the launching of Leo Frank. Everybody knew The Clansman. Most Southerners had seen the play, and read the book. And they knew that this great film was coming to Atlanta very soon. Actually I think that should be March. They had start in March. Now the crucial sequence in Birth of a Nation is when a so-called renegade Negro, played by, as usual in silent film a white actor in blackface starts pursuing with a clear intent of raping a virginal white girl played by Mae Marsh, and she is Little Sister, she's called in the film, and she is the representative of all that is holy and pure and Southern womanhood. She's being threatened by the Negro, in which she has to choose between, these phrases would echo in melodrama of the early 20th century. Throughout the 19th century, women are always throwing themselves off of cliffs rather than be raped, and violated by the alien other, usually a black, sometimes an Indian, sometimes just a swarthy European. And this phrase is choosing death before dishonor, namely being raped by a black man to escape a fate worse than death, to be raped by a black man, she decides to kill herself. This ideal lies a portrait of Mary Phagan in 1913 is clearly within this entire motif that Thomas Dixon, and dozens of other melodramas are promulgating. So when her body is found in the basement of the pencil factory, it seems to represent more than a murder. That is an assault on everything that is Southern. The accused is this oddball northern Jew who is in Atlanta but seems to be kind of out of place there. Unlike the Southern Jews in Atlanta who might have been more sensitive to the vibes. By all accounts he is something of an odd dark, and behaves oddly in the initial parts of the investigation. The question that scholars ask themselves, however, is why Leo Frank. Why do we choose Leo Frank as the murder of Mary Phagan when there's a perfectly good suspect in the form of Jim Conley, the janitor, who maybe in any other scenario would have been the obvious accused. As I said, most people do think he is the perpetrator. So why do you pick the Jewish guy, and not the black guy? And there are different explanations for that, especially given the fact that the evidence is so overwhelming against Conley. But what perhaps in the end saves Conley and convicts Frank, you've heard of the anti-semitism, besides the fact that he's a Northern outsider, is that nobody believed that a Southern African-American could spin such a persuasive story and how smart, the smartest DAs and Georgia. So in a way, the racist expectation of the white audience convict Leo Frank as well. There you get a sense of the courtroom. This, needless to say, is widely publicized throughout America. In the age we have teletype now, and we have reporters who are just sending upon Georgia with the sensational case. Frank makes a pathetic victim. As with so many of these case, the accused until the letters come out that Sarah will be talking about in a second is kind of an uninteresting vessel that the person who is the victim of this, and so most narratives of the Leo Frank story, and focusing on an investigator or the governor of Georgia Slayton, because Frank himself seems somewhat of a cipher.
Thomas Doherty: But his case immediately starts as a sparking national interests, especially needless to say, from the American Jewish community. This is the guy who is the hero of the Profiles in Courage episode that I hope some of you at least looked at. As you probably know, John Kennedy when he wrote Profiles in Courage, or had somebody else write it for him, in the 1950s, was insistent that his definition of courage would be moral courage. He didn't want any battlefield courage in the book or in the television show that later dramatize the episodes, all of which JFK approved before his assassination. I think Slaton really is one of those rare people in political life who ended up sacrificing his political career because he was persuaded that Frank was innocent and had been railroaded in an atmosphere of hysteria. When he pardons Leo Frank, he's basically hanged in effigy I always think that's an ironic note. The King of the Jews, the people who wrote that probably don't know that they're comparing Slaton to Christ. Frank is sent to the prison farm in Milledgeville and when his sentence is commuted. As you know, the mob takes them from jail and then lynches him. These are always difficult pictures to show. But as I think many of you know, lynching was a normative recreational activity for Southern white men and it was photographed as such. After the lynching, everybody gather around and have a picture taken with the victim. These were sometimes made into postcards and sold. The North does not react well to this, which only encourages the South to have more resentment against the North. Now, since I wanted to talk just a little bit about the film record, maybe just for five minutes or so, right from the very beginning, the Leo Frank case is a narrative for motion pictures, newsreels and little vignettes. This is before Leo Frank is murdered in March. People are planning feature films and dramatizations. There's even some suggestion that there might have been some motion picture footage taken of the lynching because by 1915, there might have been some cameras around. The guy who knows more about this than me is Matt Bernstein. He's written a book on this and he never was able to track down the footage. But he was able to track down a good deal of motion picture narratives based on this. This is one of the earliest by Oscar Micheaux an African-American filmmaker who might have actually been at the trial covering it. He made a version of this in '21 which is lost and then he made sort of another veiled version. The most famous film version of this is an amazing 1937 Warner Brothers film called They Won't Forget, which is about the Leo Frank case without ever mentioning the Leo Frank name because people didn't want to be sued at the time. It's anybody who saw this film in 1937 would have connected the dots. People were complaining, at least in the trade press, that the Hollywood isn't being more explicit about this. This is the episode I asked you to look at, which comes on television, as was mentioned in December, didn't get a lot of wide circulation. The Profiles in Courage series was considered public interest programming, was relegated to a bad Sunday nights slot, and it had no syndication afterlife. These things have come to prominence just recently or availability rather and they make interesting social documents here. As is usual, Walter Matthau looks nothing like John Slaton, is the ratio senator, and he's the guy with the moral courage. We don't focus on Frank at all in this, and that's true of most narratives. There's a well-regarded TV movie, again, it's about the governor, not Leo Frank, widely praised a lot of enemies for this. The documentaries are like that too. Ben Loeterman has done a recent documentary. There have been several on PBS. I think this is really the best of them. He's really insistent on drawing dialogue from the archives at Brandeis and other places. I'll conclude rather quickly by saying that to me one of the really interesting things about the Leo Frank case is it gave to history two abbreviations that are still with us. One is ADL, the anti defamation league, which is formed in the middle of the Leo Frank hysteria to defend Jews against outbreaks of antisemitism and then of course, any other victim of this prejudice. The other is the Ku Klux Klan. Here, if you ever want to think of the influence that film can really have on culture, think of The Birth of a Nation and think of the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, which was a dead organization until 1915 when the Knights of Mary Phagan, who lynched Leo Frank in August of 1915. Inspired by The Birth of a Nation, go up to Stone Mountain, Georgia in November and recreate the Ku Klux Klan. The Ku Klux Klan is recreated by the motion picture, The Birth of a Nation and lynching of Leo Frank. I want to say one other thing, this is a little unpleasant and in the age of trigger warnings and such, it's sometimes the Title IX office doesn't like me sharing these things. But it's a true part of history that we forget that, and I don't think it should be erased, that for I mentioned initials ADL, KKK, for generations in America, common parlance said that KKK stood not for Ku Klux Klan, but for Koons, Kikes and Katholics. I think it's useful to remember that the Ku Klux Klan comes about not only to reassert racist hierarchy, so we're African Americans, but for the threat of Jews and the perceived threat of Catholics as well, that they were the targets. In researching this, and I'll conclude with this, I came across this article by an Irishman from the Pittsburgh Press, which absolutely paralleled my own experience in learning about the Ku Klux Klan in the 1960s when I was in junior high and we are studying, and of course it was in the news then. I mentioned the KKK to my mother and she said just what this guy's grandmother or grandfather said, which is that, that the word stood for those three groups and that she grew up with that glib sense, of course, she was an Irish Catholic, and that that is what it stood for. I think it's really useful to remember that one of the legacies of the Leo Frank case is this particular group here. Sarah, did you want to continue here? I'll stop sharing.
SARAH SHOEMAKER: Yes. Thank you, Tom and thanks, Judy and Carol and everyone who couldn't be here with us today. I'm going to show you some materials from the Leo Frank trial collection that we hold at Brandeis. This collection, as you heard, contains letters and petitions and materials that were donated to the university in 1961. These were donated by Harold and Maxine Marcus. Leo Frank's wife, Lucille Frank was the aunt of Harold Marcus and the Marcuses were donors to the university starting in the 1950s. Mrs Marcus was also a member of what was then the Brandeis University National Women's committee. One of the things I'd like to show you is some of the letters from Leo Frank when he was in prison. I'll show you those now, please let me know if you're not able to see this. If people are not able to see this, please feel free to put something in the chat so that I'll know that. Here we have a letter, you can see it's written on June 22nd 1915 from State Farm to Mrs Leo Frank. This is from Leo Frank, he's writing to his wife, "My dear honey, I received several letters today and several wires. I expect that you are a trifle under the weather over the storm through which we have passed, etc. It has been an ordeal for both of us, my darling, but in time both of us will be happy." He speaks about his health, that he's had a cold, and that after what he's gone through, it will take some time before he regains his poise and physical balance. This is just a note of some of the many letters we have from Leo to Lucille when he was in prison. He talks about what he would like for her to send to him, cigarettes, etc. He does speak about Judge Paterson who today was touring the farm, which is the prison, spoke a few words to me, time will amply justify his action in my behalf. As for Governor Slaton, who we've just heard a lot about and as Tom pointed out, Slaton was the subject of many of the filmic representations of this case subsequently. Slaton, a man who is as brave and fearless as he is, does not fear a show of monotheism. He will rise superior to all of that and the participants will all feel ashamed of themselves. You can see where he was, where his mind was at this point. He signs, your loving husband Leo. Now, as I said, this is from June 22nd, 1915. I'll show you a few more. We often have, as you'll see, letters to and from. Here's another from Georgia State prison. This is June 25th, 1915. My dear Lucille, you get used to his handwriting after a while. He's talking about how happy her letter made him and how he locks up his materials here. This is rather a long one, so I won't read the whole thing, but as long as you're able to see it. He's even talking about the weather today started out somewhat cloudy, but it gives the promise of clearing up later in the day. He asked for his hair brush. It really gives you an idea of his day-to-day life in the prison. I'd like to show you along these lines.
SARAH SHOEMAKER: The last letter that we have from Leo Frank. This is in August 14th, 1915. This was actually written to his mother-in-law. At one point, this says, "Dear mother", and as Tom pointed out, it was in August of 1915 that he was kidnapped from the prison and lynched. That was on August 16th, this was written August 4th. He says, "Just a few words to let you know that I'm improving daily and that my dear Lucille is well and on the job. We let the nightmares go, etc. Dear Lucille is holding the fort. I hope you did not yesterday or today, hear the rumor I heard, which is that I was dead. I want to firmly and decisively deny that rumor, I am alive by a big majority by, my yesterday's letter, that might say surgical brace story is also another fabrication." So what happened was when Leo Frank was in the prison, there was an attempt on his life at that time, and so he ended up in the health ward of the prison and clearly there were rumors about this attempt on his life, and he was concerned that his mother-in-law might have heard them. So just several days before he was, in fact murdered, he's reassuring his family that he's well in a particularly heartbreaking letter. "Dear Lucille joins me in fond greetings to all", he includes her in all of his letters, mentions of her. That is the last letter we have from Leo Frank himself from prison. Now, what you'll see is many people wrote to Leo Frank, and this is a particularly interesting one. This is addressed to Leo Frank at the prison. "Please give this letter to Mr. Frank". This was written in April of 1915. I don't know if you can see it with the glare, so I'll hold it up a little bit so that you're able to see. This is an interesting letter, "MR. LEO M. Frank, sir, I know in my very heart and soul that it was Conley that killed the Phagan girl, he told me the day before" etc. This is of course, John Conley, the custodian at the pencil factory where Mary Phagan worked, of which Leo Frank was the superintendent, and he is saying, "I know John Conley and he is the one who murdered Mary Phagan." He actually says some quite rude things. Quoting Conley, Jim Conley not John Conley, Jim, and he said, "I guess I will be brought up for this crime and lynched", he's talking about a piece here where he says, "With any crime, he would leave it as their first. I wish you knew him as well as I do, and you would know that he did it. I am not giving you my name." He signs it, "A friend of Conley's" and he signs it, "from a colored man", giving himself a little bit of an identity. This letter is something that Leo Frank would have received and would have known about and this was also not long. This is in April while he was in prison, not long before he was lynched. I'd like to also show you. You can't see it. I have a box next to me full of folders, several boxes, in fact, and I need to take them out one by one in order to protect them. So we get a little bit here of the reaction to some of the people, particularly in Georgia, but in other places as well to the events of the case. This is from Miss Elsie Terrell to Mr. Frank in May 1915. At the top as you can see it says, "Please read this at the scaffold just before Mr. Leo. M. Frank is Hanged". This is written from Oklahoma. "Shall Georgia condemn an innocent man to die? I say no, but that is for you to decide. Thou shalt not kill, and if there be any one among you that has no sins, let him cast the first stone" and she's quoting the Bible here. "Will you men disgrace our union by hanging an innocent man? Oh no, you cannot." She goes on like this and she obviously feels quite strongly that she was hoping that this letter would be read just before Leo Frank was, at that time, the plan was to execute him, not to murder him. It's a fairly long letter about how she feels that Frank was innocent. Why? "Because he could not stand up before Christ and plead for his life like he does, his conscience would hurt him". As Tom discussed, there are a lot of different threads that are pulled in reactions. Both reactions in letters at the time and in later film depictions regarding both race and religion. She is an 18-year-old girl. This is the saddest case I ever read. "Please consider for one moment before you lift the rope and see if your conscience don't hurt you", etc. This is written from Oklahoma. She wrote it to Leo Frank and asked him to please send this to the governor. Now another one, this is from Georgia. Lot of response in Georgia, and this is one of many, many letters to Frank supporting him, saying that a large number of the good citizens of this town and county who are interested in the states general welfare and reputation abroad and "feeling that you have not had, as you were entitled to, a fair and just trial, wish at our own expensive to retain" etc, a particular lawyer on his behalf. There was a big outpouring of support for Frank, but as you will see momentarily, there was also quite a lot of the opposite, both for him and for Governor Slaton after the sentence was heeded. So I'm switching boxes here.
SARAH SHOEMAKER: And we're going to jump around a little bit in time. Because some of those that I'd like to show you here are just after The Death of Leo Frank. Let me make sure that you can still see this camera.Okay.This is from Lucille and she's writing to Thomas Loyless of the Augusta Chronicle in Georgia. And this is a very moving letter. This is after, this is in September after her husband has been murdered. And she's responding to an article that was written in that paper of which Thomas Loyless was the editor. And there's a lot here, but she's recounting how she hurried to see her husband as soon as she knew he was in trouble." I was there the first day. The reporters knew it the police knew it. I went to the police station and begged to see him think of the tender solicitude for me and begging me not to come to his cell. He knew he was innocent, I knew he was innocent.He expected to be out without delay. He didn't want me to see him behind bars.His concern always was for me', which you see echoed in the letters as well. "Don't come down here dear" he would say," I don't want you to remember having seen me in this place". So the piece that I particularly wanted to point out here is on the second page, she's talking about how she is from Georgia. Born and reared in this state and educated in her schools." I am a Jewest, Some will throw that into my face. I know, but I have no apologies to make for my religion. I'm also a Georgian, an American, and I do not apologize for that either. I sat beside Gentiles in school. They were my Playmates and I loved them. Many of my most intimate girlhood friends are Christians", etc."This is interesting can't they realize that my mouth is closed by the law? The law would not permit me to testify the things which I knew were untrue", she changed, were brazenly used against him. And she ends it. "If there is a God and I know there is truth will prevail". Lucille's letters subsequent to her husband's lynching are very moving. And there are other pieces of Leo Frank trial correspondence in other institutions. And as Sonya Fuentes was pointing out to me a member of the BNC and Sarasota who might be here with us today. She has a friend who's late husband's father worked for Leo Frank.Some materials that were donated to various places. The Bremen museum in Atlanta has much correspondence as well, but we really have the bulk of the Leo Frank penned correspondence here.And I want to show you as well, a few other pieces and then I'm aware that there will be questions.Somebody has asked about digitization, which I will talk about momentarily. This letter here, this is from F. J Turner and he is writing from the office of the Librarian at the Georgia State Prison. He is writing this as a confidential letter and he's writing it to Lucille. This is in August 1915. And what he's recounting here, he says, "As you can appreciate, one can find in prison is often restricted, unrestrained, from doing what he conscientiously believes to be his moral duty", etc. And he expresses that he was unable to express his sympathy to her and says that he is sympathetic with both Leo and Lucille. What he's talking about here is information that was given to him of who was in the mob. And he says It is not altogether improbable that I can obtain the name of others.These were generally prominent citizens. They were not hiding as Tom showed the photograph of the lynching, they were not hiding. Their identities at the time. But he recounts here that he was really trying to prevail upon the night watchmen when the mob was on its way to send Leo Frank out the back under guard to try to protect him. And he describes how he was certain that it was a mob and was imploring the night watchman to help, and he would not. So he also has a written statements signed by another prisoner attesting that he did try to help in the moment and was prevented from doing so. Now, one piece that I want to show in just these last few minutes, and I have more that I could show, but I want to make sure that we have time for questions and I can return to some of these pieces. But I want to show as I described. Another view on Slaton, which is written June 1915, signs the life takers addressed to Mr. John Slaton." You've commuted the sentence of Leo and Frank from death to life imprisonment over the entire United States decisions.We as the people of the nearby surroundings of Atlanta, Do solemnly swear,that we as a body of reliable citizens, etc, have taken an oath that we, as a body expect to kill you regardless of time or your whereabouts. We expect to hanged by the neck with a rope until you are dead etc, no matter where you go or where you stay, we intend to kill you and then kill Frank". So Governor Slaton was well aware of the response to his actions. There are many, many letters of support, many petitions, as you saw, many, many pleas for commuting the sentence and strong reactions once he did so. Like this one, and another that I have here. Signed used to be one of your most ardent admirers, which is another letter of strong criticism.There are many, many more that I could show you. I will leave today before we get to questions with one piece.
SARAH SHOEMAKER: And we can come back to these any of these. But I wanted to show you. This is Lucille Frank's daily planner. And as you can see, it's very tiny and it's very fragile. I am just opening it a little bit, but what I wanted to show is actually blown up a bit. You can see it a little bit more clearly here. This is the month of August and she writes, My Darling is buried what has life for me now. That's just a small sampling of some of the pieces from the Leo Frank trial collection. And as I said, I could show you much, much more. There are hundreds of pieces in this collection of all kinds of perspectives. But I want to make sure that we have time for questions. Dania, if you'd like to start that. I'm happy to talk more.
Dania Khandaker: Yes. Actually, we received quite a few questions. Someone was asking if you could clarify when Leo frank entered prison, how long before the letters.
SARAH SHOEMAKER: Well, let's see, the Mary Phagan was murdered in April of 1913. A couple days later, Leo Frank was arrested and charged, and then the trial took a few weeks. It was in 1915 where after a series of appeals, the final murder conviction, appeal was rejected. He was murdered August 16th, 1915.
Dania Khandaker: It is clear that these documents gave insight into Leo Frank situation and how important it is to save them. Can you talk a little bit about the act of digitizing these documents and extents that is involved?
SARAH SHOEMAKER: Yes. In brief it's a long process, but in brief, what we do and digitizing a collection is, as you've seen, some of these materials are very fragile, so we have to make sure that they are preserved in digital form and treated very carefully during the digitization process. Once they've been selected and stabilized if necessary, what we do is have them professionally digitized and then the process of creating information about them begins, we call it metadata so that you can find what you're looking for in the world of online digitized information. There's several steps to this process. Not just the actual digitization, but beyond that, there are a number of steps that we need to take to make sure that they are findable and usable in their digitized form. Including for digital humanities, projects that have not yet even been conceived yet. But we want people to know that they exist in digital form. Once they are in that format.
Dania Khandaker: I have this students being able to look at this material.
SARAH SHOEMAKER: Oh, yes. This collection is frequently used in classes. We have students in well, except this year. Students have been using them digitally this year for classes, but in previous years, we've had classes into look at the materials. And another group that is frequently looking at materials from this collection are recent lungs have people who are involved in productions of the musical parade, which I believe somebody mentioned to get a better sense of their characters.
Dania Khandaker: Do you know what happened to Khan-Lee, Was he ever charged?
Thomas Doherty: No, he wasn't. He ever charged. And he disappears from the record. There's somewhat consequent being arrested and busted. And I think 1941. And there's apparently no death certificate for Gem Khan Lee and he just disappears from history. Very mysterious story. I mean, is the kind of individual probably would have just disappeared from history if he did not feature in this extraordinary story. There's no closure there. And I think it's one of the nice things about having these documents that at Brandeis. I was thinking as Sarah was talking in, And that might take it usually sort of analytical. And you talk about the cultural history and the meaning of the case. But when you have those tangible documents and you'll realize that Leo Frank sort of wrote with this pencil on this piece of paper. It really brings the flesh and blood part of the story to you. And I think it's sort of, having both of those things is really so important to, it's just not a critical case for you, but it's actually a, human story. And I think Frank's letter's really a noble him at the end. And there are stories like as he's being lynched, he gives a quite moving and powerful and courageous com-statement by all accounts, by the accounts of the people who are lynching him. And virtually everybody has persuaded of his innocence. And this is, as he's about to be lynched. And it's like four or five people are on board and they've come all this way and have gone all this trouble without, like we can't not go up away without lynching and that they lynch him. It's really an extraordinary story of a sort of personal courage and yen and he doesn't.
Dania Khandaker: The President of the country tried to interfere. And this was happening. Do we have any laggards are any indication that any kind of interference or the president stopping in.
Thomas Doherty: And I think my screen froze or somebody's screen froze.
Dania Khandaker: I think Sarah maybe. Sarah, can you hear this?
SARAH SHOEMAKER: I can hear that. Yeah. I thought that was directive's or Tom, whether he knows-.
Dania Khandaker: Either of you.
Thomas Doherty: What what was the question again? I think I missed it.
Dania Khandaker: Did the president of the country interfere or tried to interfere when this was happening?
Thomas Doherty: Oh, no. And of course, the president of the country for most of this was Woodrow Wilson, who is quoted very affirmatively and Birth of a Nation. D.W Griffith comes to Washington and gives the first east coast premiere, East Coast screening of Birth of a Nation in the White House. And Woodrow Wilson reportedly said he denied it later or as people denied it later when he saw Birth of a Nation. It was like a history written enlightening as the famous phrase that goes down through the ages. Woodrow Wilson would not have been somebody who could've intervened in this. And of course he couldn't know any more than the president could intervene in the death of Sacco and Vanzetti or the Rosenbergs, other cases like the president doesn't have that kind of authority to stop the execution.
Dania Khandaker: Can you talk a little bit about Griffiths Raul. Did he believe in the narrative or was his interests in the film purely commercial?
Thomas Doherty: Oh no. Griffith was an unreconstructed confederate. He heard these as his father fought in the Civil War. One of the things you have to say about Birth of a Nation is he got a lot of the stories of the South and of the troops in the battlefield from his father, so there are some details in Birth of a Nation that are dead on that only somebody who knew the story from his father, like the women using cotton instead of ermine in their jackets, or eating parched corn in the field which he got right from his father's Nate. But he was totally on board with Thomas Dixon's view of the African-American and of the Civil War. The film was named after the Dixon novel, The Clansman, which would have been the brand name everybody knew in 1915 and that's how it premiered in Los Angeles. But by the time it gets to the East Coast, they changed the title to the Birth of a Nation, and that's because Griffith wanted to claim ownership over the story. No, it's Thomas Dixon's, The Clansman, but Griffith's Birth of a Nation. He was very much on board for this. My sense is he didn't know quite the firestorm he was going to release because this becomes an animating center for the NAACP and, of course, the ADL, Steven Weiss protested the film, the famous Rabbi, so Griffith was on board with the film.
Dania Khandaker: A couple of people want to know the episodes on Governor Slaton, where they can stream it or watch it.
Thomas Doherty: I'm not sure it's on YouTube, you can probably get it through the National Committee. I thought the National Committee sent a link to it and these episodes of profile and courage, I believe they haven't been copyrighted. I think they're out there in a way that some episodes aren't. They just did one season of the show, it didn't get all that good ratings and not all NBC affiliates took it and I don't know if I flashed the PowerPoint too quickly but one of the reviews I had, the reviewer said these shows are very good and the only problem with this show is that not enough Americans are watching it.
Dania Khandaker: Actually, couple of people want to know about the pictures that are behind Sarah and I think actually that would be interesting. Sarah, do you think it?
SARAH SHOEMAKER: I am sitting in the reading room of the archives in special collections department in the Brandeis Library. The pictures behind me are from the university photography collection, so these are photographs from Brandeis University history over the years. That collection contains thousands and thousands of photographs which we do hope also to do some digitalization of. I don't know which ones you can see from where you are but if you see Martin Luther King Junior, there's a photo of him when he visited campus. Havi Hoffman is there somewhere. Eleanor Roosevelt is speaking, the Dalai Lama, Angela Davis, and some students doing various things including protesting. Those are just a few examples of the university photography collection.
Dania Khandaker: Very nice. What percentage of the library's collections have been digitized and how do you prioritize what records get digitized?
SARAH SHOEMAKER: A very small portion of archives in special collections have been digitized and that is actually not surprising considering the many barriers to digitization that we face. Among them, copyright, permissions, fragile materials, funding for large scale digitization efforts. We have done a lot of digitization, our materials are available online in some cases, books on the Internet archive as well as digitized materials available through the library website and in various other ways around the world. This is one of the reasons why we're focusing on digitization efforts of one of a kind unique materials held only by Brandeis, but a very small percentage of our materials. If you look at the entire collection and how much is available digitally, it's a small percentage.
Dania Khandaker: Thank you, Sarah. I think we are actually out of time. We had so many questions and so sorry that we couldn't get to all of them but thank you. I want to thank Tom, I want to thank Sarah, and I think Judy Levine would like to end off our event today. Thank you.
Judy Levine: I believe it's going to be Carol Kern.
Dania Khandaker: Carol Kern, go ahead.
Carol Kern: Our sincere appreciation for the outstanding presentation of the Leo Frank papers, and information about Governor Slaton goes to Sarah Shoemaker and Tom Doherty. Thank you so much. Today's webinar couldn't have run so smoothly without the work of Dania Khandaker. Thank you Dania for all the work that you have done. Thank you to all who attended today to learn about the importance of Leo Frank collection that is part of the BNC Honoring our History campaign. Forgetting painful chapters of history comes with a price tag. If decent people everywhere would rather forget the Leo Frank case, there are others who will always be eager to keep alive the memory of Leo Frank, the Jewish criminal, who murdered an innocent girl. Remembering him as a victim is the only way to combat these efforts. The only way to make sure the defamation of Leo Frank doesn't continue today, so many years after his absolute innocence was proved without a doubt. That's why it's so important to preserve this collection. We hope you've enjoyed today's presentation. The goal of Honoring our History to digitize social justice files is $500,000. We want to thank the many BNC chapters and individual donors who contributed. There's a link to donate if you're so inclined on the Brandeis National Committee website. As we conclude today's webinar, I'd like to leave you with this thought. We hope that our lives will be filled with love, fairness, and a faith that doesn't breed hate and injustice. Thank you all.