And the Dead Shall Rise: The Murder of Mary Phagan and the Lynching of Leo Frank

This book shows the best and the worst of modern journalism.

The best, in that it dramatically demonstrates that young, beautiful (but ignorant and stranded) Mary Phagan was murdered by Jim Conley, the black janitor at the National Pencil Factory. But the worst, in that it never says so.

The Phagan

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case demonstrated the immense problems with justice in America in 1913. Atlanta's police were often not interested in doing their jobs, and when they were interested, they didn't have the resources needed. (E.g. what we would call their forensics department was pitiful even by 1913 standards. The incompetents there couldn't even tell whether Phagan had been raped.) Worse, politicians were willing to prosecute based on prejudice and the chance to court popular acclaim -- and they weren't willing to do their jobs right.

All these things Steve Oney demonstrates with skill and determination. There have been many books about the Phagan/Frank case. Several, notably that by Leonard Dinnerstein, are highly scholarly. None is as full as Oney's. Anything you want to know about Leo Frank, Jim Conley, or Mary Phagan is in here.

But Oney is so determined to be "balanced" and "fair" that he is often guilty of smothering facts in other facts. He doesn't want to convict Conley without a fair trial -- and so he doesn't ever even really examine the case against Conley. This even though Conley was clearly the only person who could possibly have committed the murder; it was either Conley or, just possibly, persons unknown. The fact that Oney avoids drawing this conclusion leaves much of the data he supplies hanging in the wind.

I wish I could fully approve of the result. This is a story that needs to be told, in what it tells Americans about our prejudices and our justice system. But, at minimum, Oney should have ended it with a summary of the conclusions he reached from the evidence. After all, he went through all of it; we just went through his book. And the evidence is clear. But, ironically, it was clearer in the other books. I might have had trouble following it had I started with Oney. And all because he was trying too hard for "balance." Sometimes, truth is better.

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