June 3, 2024 – Mary Phagan Case News

Ben Platts long-awaited return to Broadway got off to a troubling start this week as incoming theatergoers were accosted by members of a far-right, neo-Nazi hate group.

A video posted to Twitter by journalist Jake Wasserman of the Forward shows a masked man representing the National Socialist Movement distributing antisemitic flyers outside of the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater in New York, where Platt began preview performances in the musical Parade Tuesday.

Youre paying $300 to go fucking worship a pedophile, the unidentified man says in the video.In the background, another person shouts:Romanticizing pedophiles, wow, Leo Frank.

According to Playbill, the man was joined by a small but vocal group of demonstrators carrying handwritten signs with hateful, antisemitic rhetoric.

Written by Alfred Uhry and Jason Robert Brown, Parade is based on the life of Leo Frank (played by Platt), a Jewish man who in 1913 was wrongfully convicted of raping and murdering a 13-year-old factory worker,Mary Phagan.Two years into his life sentence,Frank was abducted from a Georgia prison and hanged by a lynch mob.He was posthumously pardoned in 1986.

Platt, who rocketed to fame in 2016 for his Tony-winning performance in Dear Evan Hansen,addressed the protest in a short video posted to his Instagram page.

Micaela Diamond and Ben Platt in "Parade."

For those who dont know, there were a few neo-Nazi protesters from a really disgusting group outside of the theater, bothering some of our patrons on their way in and saying antisemitic things about Leo Frank, who the show is about, he said in the clip. It was definitely very ugly and scary, but a wonderful reminder of why were telling this particular story and how special and powerful art and, particularly, theater can be. And just made me feel extra grateful to be the one who gets to tell this particular story and to carry on this legacy of Leo.

After assuring fans who came to see Parade that they would be super safe and secure, the actor went on to note,Now is really the moment for this particular piece.

On Wednesday, the shows production team echoed Platts sentiments in a statement denouncing the vileness on displayoutside the theater the previous night.

Parade premiered on Broadway in 1998,winning two Tony Awards. The current production openedto rave reviews at the New York City Center in November of last year before its Broadway transfer was confirmed in January.

According to Deadline,the Telecharge ticketing site briefly crashed due to high demand for tickets.The musical will officially open March 16.

Ben Platt Blasts 'Disgusting' Neo-Nazis Who Protested His Broadway Show - Yahoo Lifestyle UK

His trial, conviction, and appeals attracted national attention. His lynching two years later, in response to the remission of his death sentence, became the focus of social, regional, political and racial concerns, particularly regarding anti-Semitism.

Frank (1884-1915) was born in Texas to a Jewish home of German descent. He lived for a time in New York and graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering from Cornell University. He worked in various companies, until in 1907 he was hired to run the National Pencil Company pencil factory in Atlanta. In 1910 he married Lucille Selig, a young woman from a prominent industrial family, and became actively involved in the city's Jewish community, being elected president of the local B'nai B'rith.

Court case and lynching

He was convicted on circumstantial evidence of the rape and murder of an employee: thirteen-year-old girl Mary Phagan. The trial was followed by the sensational press. Frank's extrajudicial murder is the first known anti-Semitic lynching in the United States. Georgian politician Tom Watson capitalized on the case to bolster public support for the renewal of the Ku Klux Klan, which had been dismantled by the federal government more than 40 years ago.

The jury unanimously found him guilty, and he was sentenced to death. The sentence was commuted to life in prison after Georgia Governor John Slaton reviewed the evidence. On the night of August 17, 1915, a group of men calling themselves the Knights of Mary Phagan arrived at the Milledgeville State Penitentiary, kidnapped Frank, and led him in handcuffs to a farm in nearby Marietta, where he was hanged. His last words were: I think more about my wife and my mother than about my own life.

Mary Phagan's Knights included former Georgia Governor Joseph Mackey Brown, Judge Newton Morris, and former Marietta Mayor Eugene Herbert Clay; Also present were the famous lawyer John Tucker Dorsey, the city's sheriff William Frey, lawyers and even doctors.

In 1982, Alonzo Mann, a former employee of the factory, declared that he was convinced that Leo Frank was innocent. He claimed that he saw Jim Conley, an African-American janitor, take Mary Phagan to the basement, but that he threatened to kill her if she spoke about her.

In 1986 Leo Frank was posthumously pardoned because of Alonzo Mann's testimony, although he was never officially acquitted of the murder charge.

The story of his trial, his conviction, his lynching and the subsequent events was told in the miniseriesThe murder of Mary Phagan(1988)

Source: Wikipedia

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Leo Frank, murdered by the Knights of Mary Phagan - Aurora Israel

Day: June 3, 2024

Ben Platt Blasts ‘Disgusting’ Neo-Nazis Who Protested His Broadway Show – Yahoo Lifestyle UK

Leo Frank, murdered by the Knights of Mary Phagan – Aurora Israel