“The Law Won Over Big Money”: Tom Watson and the Leo Frank Case

Abstract

On August 21, 1915, an editorial in The Baltimore Afro-Americandeclared that the lynching of Leo Frank “presents to outraged Americans an entirely different spectacle from the fifty other lynchings of the year.” Moreover, “the incompetency and the connivance of the state officials have been proved by the mob spirit, the true Georgia spirit.”¹ The Baltimore Afro-American editorial deplored the act of lynching but, the national reaction to Frank’s lynching, since a majority of lynching victims during this time period had been African-American men, did not trigger a similar outrage.