Steve Oney papers

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Steve Oney papers

1896-2009

http://ghs.galileo.usg.edu/ghs/view?docId=ead/MS%202361-ead.xml;query=;brand=default

This collection contains the publications, correspondence, preparatory notes, and outlines of author and journalist Steve Oney, dating from 1896-2009. Also included in the collection are photographs, posters, and audiovisual material. Additionally there are two copies of the script for The People v. Leo Frank, a documentary film on which Oney collaborated. The bulk of the collection relates to his book And The Dead Shall Rise, published in 2003, about the trial and lynching of Leo M. Frank, a Northern born Jewish man residing in Atlanta, Georgia in the first half of the 20th century. In 1913, Mary Phagan, a 13 year old employee of the National Pencil Company, was found murdered in the basement of the factory. Frank, superintendent of the same company and last known person to see Phagan alive, was accused and convicted of her murder in 1913 and convicted and sentenced to death by hanging on August 25, 1913. Frank's conviction rested predominately on Jim Conley, the factory's janitor and African American. At this time in the south, the conviction of a white man on the testimony of a black man was nearly unheard of. Between 1913 and 1915 several appeals were unsuccessfully attempted and on June 21, 1915, Frank's death sentence was commuted to life in prison by Georgia Governor John M. Slaton. Later that year, on August 17th, Frank was lynched in Frey's Gin, two miles east of Marietta, Georgia, by a group of vigilantes. The aftermath of the lynching led many members of the Jewish population to leave the state. Frank's 1913 arrest and trial resulted in the founding of the Anti Defamation League. After multiple failed attempts for Frank to be granted a posthumous pardon, the Anti Defamation League convinced the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles to issue a pardon on March 11, 1986. The case of Leo Frank and the murder of Mary Phagan has been dramatized into a Broadway musical, Parade, and in 2009 the PBS production by Ben Loeterman, The People v. Leo Frank premiered. Oney contributed his files for the production's research. The collection also contains the published newspaper and magazine work of Steve Oney from 1978 to 2009. Publications include Time Magazine, Los Angeles magazine, Playboy, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Atlanta Weekly, Esquire, GQ, Angeleno Magazine, and The Anderson Independent.

25.1 cubic feet (25 boxes, 2 oversize folders)

eng, Latn

Georgia Historical Society

Information

SNAC Resource ID: 7942075

Georgia Historical Society

Related Entities

There are 9 Entities related to this resource.

Anti-Defamation League (ADL)

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6136k48 (corporateBody)

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), originally Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, was founded in Chicago in 1913 to fight antisemitism and other forms of bigotry and discrimination. In 2009, ADL became independent of B’nai B’rith and changed its name to Anti-Defamation League. Its activities include investigation and documentation of antisemitism, extremism, and other forms of hate in the United States; and litigation, education, and policy advocacy regarding the subjects of antisemitism, ext...

Slaton, John M.

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6rf6sbd (person)

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Watson, Thomas E. (Thomas Edward), 1856-1922

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6vh690r (person)

Thomas Edward Watson was born in Columbia County near Thomson, Georgia on September 5, 1856. He attended Mercer University in Macon, Georgia and during that time taught school for two years before he was admitted to the bar in 1875. Watson began practicing law in Thomson, Georgia in 1876, where he was also a farmer. Watson began his political career by winning election to the Georgia House of Representatives in 1882, where he served for one term. In 1888, Watson was appointed the presidential el...

Oney, Steve, 1954-

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Steve Oney was born in 1954 and attended the University of Georgia and Harvard University, where he was a Nieman Fellow. He worked for many years as a staff writer for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution Magazine. He has also contributed articles to many national publications. In 2003 he published And The Dead Shall Rise, a non-fiction accounting of the murder of Mary Phagan and the lynching of Leo Frank. And the Dead Shall Rise won the American Bar Association's Silver Gavel Award for best work on...

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Frank, Leo, 1884-1915

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6bc4n5b (person)

Leo Frank, a Jewish Atlanta businessman and Superintendent and Vice President of the National Pencil Factory, Atlanta, Georgia, was born 17 April 1884, in Paris, Texas, and died 17 August 1915, in Marietta, Georgia. Frank was sentenced to death by hanging (1913) for the murder of Mary Phagan, an employee he supervised at the National Pencil Factory. His sentence was commuted to life imprisonment (July 1915) because of doubt by some trial officials as to his guilt. Frank was abducted by a mob (Au...

Phagan, Mary

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6mh0cfz (person)

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