How well do modern theatregoers seeing “Parade,” at the Bernard B. Jacobs, know the story of Leo Frank? It’s been more than a century since Frank, the Jewish superintendent of an Atlanta pencil factory, was accused of the sexual assault and murder of thirteen-year-old Mary Phagan, railroaded into a guilty verdict, tantalized with the possibility of an appeal, then kidnapped from prison and lynched in Marietta, Georgia. At the time, the overt display of Southern antisemitism—crowds outside the courthouse where he was tried screamed “Hang the Jew!”—shocked the country. Some rose up against it: Frank’s ordeal spurred the formation of the Anti-Defamation League, for example. But it also helped fuel the revival of the Ku Klux Klan. Some of the men who burned a cross on Stone Mountain in 1915 were the so-called Knights of Mary Phagan, who had been in Marietta only a few months earlier, under an oak tree.
This story is from the March 27, 2023 edition of The New Yorker.
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This story is from the March 27, 2023 edition of The New Yorker.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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NO WAY BACK
The resurgence, in the past decade, of Paul Schrader as one of the most accomplished and acclaimed contemporary movie directors is part of a bigger trend: the self-reinvention of Hollywood auteurs as independent filmmakers.
PRIMORDIAL SORROW
\"All Life Long,\" the title of the most recent album by the composer and organist Kali Malone, is taken from a poem by the British Symbolist author Arthur Symons: \"The heart shall be weary and wonder and cry like the sea,/ All life long crying without avail,/As the water all night long is crying to me.\"
CHOPPED AND STEWED
The other day, at a Nigerian restaurant called Safari, in Houston, Texas, I peeled back the plastic wrap on a ball of fufu, a staple across West Africa.
TOUCH WOOD
What do people do all day? My daughter loves to read Richard Scarry's book of that title, though she generally skips ahead to the hospital pages.
HELLO, HEARTBREAK
Heartbreak cures are as old as time, or at least as old as the Common Era.
ENEMY OF THE STATE
Javier Milei's plan to remake Argentina begins with waging war on the government.
THE CHOOSING ONES
The saga of my Jewish conversion began twenty-five years ago, when I got engaged to my first husband.
OBSCURE FAMILIAL RELATIONS, EXPLAINED FOR THE HOLIDAYS
Children who share only one parent are half siblings. Children who have been bisected via a tragic logging accident are also half siblings, but in a different way.
NOTE TO SELVES
The Sonoran Desert, which covers much of the southwestern United States, is a vast expanse of arid earth where cartoonish entities-roadrunners, tumbleweeds, telephone-pole-tall succulents make occasional appearances.
BADDIE ISSUES
\"Wicked\" and \"Gladiator II.\"
