From Pardon to Propaganda: The 2015 Leo Frank Memorial 0n August 16, 2015

On the eve of the 100th anniversary of Leo Frank’s lynching, Temple Kol Emeth in Cobb County staged what was presented as a memorial but functioned more like a carefully managed advocacy event. Directed by Rabbi Steven Lebow and later shaped into a fifteen-minute video by Eli and Nikki Goodstein, the production advanced a single message: Leo Frank was innocent and deserved exoneration. It did so without confronting the trial evidence, the preserved appellate record, or the repeated judicial rulings that upheld the guilty verdict. The result was not a balanced historical reflection but a one-sided effort to rehabilitate Frank’s reputation. The victim, Mary Phagan, was effectively erased from the frame, while the speakers focused entirely on moral urgency, institutional remorse, and the need for Georgia to go beyond its 1986 pardon, which expressly declined to address guilt or innocence. Prominent legal figures lent the event institutional weight, but none engaged the underlying factual record in any serious way. Instead, the memorial operated as a public relations push dressed in the language of remembrance, using respected voices to build momentum for a political and cultural campaign to declare Frank officially innocent. The event doesn't reveal it all about Leo Frank; get the complete picture from Mary Phagan-Kean's 2025 second revised edition of The Murder of Little Mary Phagan (public domain). WEBSITE: www.LittleMaryPhagan.com