I recently came across this 1927 recording of Vernon Dahlhart's "Little Mary Phagan." Many readers will recognize Mary Phagan as the name of a young girl who was murdered in an Atlanta pencil factory in 1913. Leo Frank, the factory manager, was wrongfully convicted of the murder and sentenced to death. Georgia Gov. John Slaton commuted the sentence to life imprisonment, after which a mob kidnapped Frank from prison and lynched him by hanging. The anti-Jewish agitation against Frank had been led by the populist editor and political figure Tom Watson, who applauded the lynching after it happened. "Lynch law is a good sign," he wrote.
Dahlhart does not mention Frank by name -- calling him only "the brute" -- but suggests approval of the lynching in a verse beginning at 2:30. Remember, the song was recorded twelve years after Frank's hanging.
Vernon Dahlhart was immensely popular in the 1920s, and has been called the first star of country music. He sold over 7 million copies of "The Wreck of the Old 97" in 1924. His subsequent recording of "The Prisoner’s Song" (“If I had the wings of an angel”) also sold millions.
Leo Frank was posthumously pardoned in 1986.
It is chilling to think that the most popular musician in America recorded a song that memorialized the one of the most anti-Semitic acts in our history. I am sure that there were also songs in that era celebrating violence against African-Americans. Were there any such songs by a star of Dahlhart's magnitude?
[UPDATE: It turns out that Dahlhart's version was a cover. The original was by Fiddlin' John Carson (with the vocal by his daughter Rosa, also known as Moonshine Kate) who performed it on the courthouse steps during the trial, and later to celebrate the lynching. Carson's version refers to "Leo Frank the brute" and calls upon the judge to "send Leo Frank to [hell] -- the rhyme makes the word obvious, but it could not be said out loud on a record in those days. Yet another version was recorded by Moonshine Kate. Thanks to Marni Davis of Georgia State University for the additional information.]
Is it possible that the song was written by Fiddling John Carson during the trial in 1914, well before the lynching in 1915?
Most printed versions of the lyrics do include Frank's name and finish with the death sentence issued by the judge before the commutation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Frank#Popular_culture
Posted by: anon | September 30, 2015 at 03:54 PM
Thanks, Anon. I added an update to that effect before I saw your comment.
Posted by: Steve Lubet | September 30, 2015 at 04:02 PM