A LITTLE GIRL IS DEAD

by Harry Golden ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 22, 1965

Hang the Jew, or we'll hang you"" was the incantation of the crowd heard throughout the trial of Leo Frank, for the assault and murder of a pretty fourteen year old factory girl in 1913 in Atlanta, Georgia, a case which (except for its political reverberations) Golden refers to as a Southern Dreyfus affair. Frank was condemned as a Jew, a Yankee and a capitalist; actually he was a small executive and a rather colorless little man. He was the first white man convicted on the evidence of a Negro, not only a Negro but a semi-literate pervert with a record. He was doomed before the formal litigation of the case, by the misrepresentation of the press, the deliberate slackness of the police, the manipulation of prosecutor Dorsey, and the ineptitude of his three lawyers. And, even though his sentence was commuted after a two year appeal, he was lynched. These are the sorry facts and without reviewing further the crime itself, physically interesting per se, the case has become archetypal not only in exposing ""the open sore"" of anti-Semitism but also as illustrating the primordial fear of the American South-- the violation of its womanhood. Golden's intensive re-examination here, based on the full testimony then, the later opinions and some new evidence, is soundly interesting, reasonable in tone and firm in its point of view.

Pub Date: Nov. 22, 1965

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: World

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1965

Categories: NONFICTION