Shortly after I moved to Atlanta almost two decades ago, I learned a valuable lesson in Southern Jewish etiquette.
You can discuss anything in polite company. Politics, sex, and money -- all good. Except for one subject. That would be Leo Frank -- the only American Jew to be lynched. (The essential book on the case -- And The Dead Shall Rise by Steve Oney).
In 1913, Leo Frank managed the National Pencil Company in Atlanta. In August of that year, a thirteen year old worker, Mary Phagan from Marietta, Georgia, was found murdered in the factory. As a Northerner and a Jew, Frank was automatically, doubly, the Other, and automatically the suspect.
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