Chapter 16: 1998: Parade the Broadway musical is a corruption of history and radical attempt to whitewash a horrible murder and pin it on Jim Conley, a Negro

Word Count: 1994 Words, Reading Time: 7 Minutes

Last Updated on June 16, 2024 by Mary Phagan

 

BROADWAY'S PARADE IS NOT THE "TRUE STORY" OF LEO FRANK:  HATE ON A STAGE 1998-2024

It has been announced that there will soon be a performance of one of the most blatantly deceitful productions ever to appear on an American stage. Parade purports to be a “true account” of the 1913 rape and strangulation murder of 13-year-old Mary Phagan in an Atlanta factory. Leo Frank, the factory manager, was arrested and convicted of the crime. She was more than a faceless victim of a century-old murder; she was my great aunt and she is the one for whom I am named. For many years my family
studied this horrific crime and after thousands of research hours I wrote a book in 1987 titled The Murder of Little Mary Phagan.
As experts on the case, and the propaganda and misinformation surrounding it, we must inform you that the play Parade is part of a cynical attempt to rewrite history and to hide one of the most racist chapters in American history.

And, further, they pose Frank as a symbol of "civil rights" even though it is abundantly clear that Leo Frank and his supporters employed the most racist of tactics to elude justice. They seek to bury the fact that Frank and his high-priced team of private eyes and lawyers attempted to
pin the blame on two innocent African American men!

For over a century, powerful members of the Jewish community have taken on Leo Frank as a cause celebre. They falsely claim that Frank was a victim of anti-Semitism and they have engaged in an unrelenting campaign to exonerate him. A major part of that propaganda campaign is Alfred Uhry’s play Parade. But Uhry and those who promote Parade have concealed the mountain of evidence that proves that Frank was indeed the murderer of Little Mary Phagan.

And, further, they pose Frank as a symbol of "civil rights" even though it is abundantly clear that Leo Frank and his supporters employed the most racist of tactics to elude justice. They seek to bury the fact that Frank and his high-priced team of private eyes and lawyers attempted to pin the blame on two innocent African American men!

Parade, a musical began at the New York's Lincoln Center December 17, 1998.  Parade was a short-lived Broadway musical which earned Tony Awards for best book of a musical [Alred Uhry] and best original score [Jason Robert Brown].

Parade comes from the Confederate Memorial Day Parade, where Mary Phagan was murdered at the National Pencil Company April 26, 1913, the subsequent trial and conviction of Leo Frank, Superintendent and the lynching of Frank by the Vigilance Committee in Marietta.  The musical Parade clearly indicates Jim Conley, the negro committed the murder of Mary Phagan.

Peach Buzz December 19, 1998, wrote that the most critical review from Ben Brantley chief critic of New York Times "singled out Uhry's book as one of the weakest elements of the musical about Leo Frank case, which premiered Thursday at Lincoln Center... flat and iconic as a bleeding saint religious mural. For tears to flow, we have to get to Leo Frank as a man, not a symbol, Brantley wrote.  The civics lesson that is 'Parade' forbids our ever approaching such knowledge."

With ticket sales falling and Canadian Livent Inc. partnership filling for Chapter 11 of the federal bankruptcy code, Lincoln Center Theater ends Parade on February 28, 1999, with an estimated loss of 5.5 million,

Parade opens June 13-18, 2000, at Atlanta's Fox Theater.

Marietta's Theater in the Square looks at the same chapter in Georgia, The Lynching of Leo Frank August 16, 2000. and Final Performance September 24, 2000.

"Robert Myers’ The Lynching of Leo Frank examines the social, political and moral climate surrounding the famed early 1900s case. Frank, a Jewish factory manager, was convicted of the murder of young pencil factory worker Mary Phagan. While imprisoned at Milledgeville, he was forced from the jail by a *mob and hanged in Marietta, less than two miles from the site of the town square." [TheaterMania.com]  *[no mobs, they called themselves the "Vigilance Committee]

2015: The hundredth anniversary of the lynching of Leo Frank

Parade, Marietta Theater in the Square; The Phagan family attended and were deeply offended by the musical Parade.  The portrayal of Mary Phagan and our great-grandmother, Fannie Phagan Coleman was shameful, distasteful and blatant lies.

2018:  From September 27–October 7, Jason Robert Brown and Alfred Uhry’s Tony-winning musical Parade played the historic town of Marietta, Georgia, where the tragic events of history chronicled in the show played out over a century ago.

2019: Student Protests Lead Point Park to Postpone Parade Musical

Pittsburg Post-Gazzette

In 2019, Pennsylvania College Students at Point Park University in Pittsburgh “rejected the Alfred Uhry play PARADE and the school CANCELLED its performance. For years Uhry, the writer of the movie Driving Miss Daisy has promoted PARADE as the ‘true story’ of the Leo Frank case.” According to the Jewish Chronicle, “some Point Park students...took issue with the show’s conclusion that implies that Jim Conley, a black janitor and Frank’s main accuser, was the actual perpetrator of the crimes...”
Students at Point Park determined that they would not be a part of racist propaganda.

2023:

New York City Center (NYCC) has announced that it will present one of the most blatantly deceitful productions ever to appear on an American stage. *Parade purports to be a “true account” of the 1913 rape and strangulation murder of 13-year-old Mary Phagan in an Atlanta factory. Leo Frank, the factory manager, was arrested and convicted of the crime.  *This was the first time that a neo-Nazi hate group, The National Socialist Movement, protested the Broadway revival of “Parade.”  They held signs/pamphlets stating that Leo Frank was a pedophile.  

What the management of NYCC may not know is that when they chose to stage the play Parade, they made themselves part of a cynical attempt to rewrite history and to hide one of the most racist chapters in American history. NYCC’s mission statement claims that they are “committed to being an anti-racist organization.” It further states that they will “Conduct internal and external listening and learning sessions to recognize the challenges faced by Black, Indigenous, and People of Color in society while we identify and reject white privilege in all its forms throughout our organization and industry.” Well, if this is so, then Parade represents a firm step by NYCC in the opposite direction.

NYCC chose The Telsey Office to be the casting agency for Parade, and they say this on their website: “We are constantly and endlessly striving to be an actively anti-racist organization through education, communication, and most importantly, measurable action. This includes being unafraid to have uncomfortable conversations...

The New York City Center and The Telsey Office have now made themselves part of that racist campaign.

Even The Telsey Office’s description of Mr. Conley in their casting call is completely inaccurate and full of the same ugly stereotypes promoted by Leo Frank’s defense team.

It reads:
"[JIM CONLEY] Character is male, 20s,
Black. Janitor who works for Leo Frank....
Secretly, he is a convict on the run. Pompous showman with a strong build."
(So much for “constantly and endlessly striving to be an actively anti-racist organization through education.”)

Further, Alfred Uhry’s Parade demands that we ignore sworn testimony of Leo Frank’s sexual crimes against girls and young women, even before the murder of Little Mary Phagan. Frank, it is now clear, was very much the Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein of his era. At least 20 young women and girls Frank employed at the factory he managed testified of how they were victims of his sexual harassment. In 1913, they did not have the #MeToo movement to stand up for them.

Scholars Slam “Fictional” Parade
Frankly, no serious scholars of this case have ever taken Parade as anything other than a made-up fairy tale to advance a political agenda. Boston University professor Dr. Jeffrey Melnick is author of a book about the Leo Frank case, Black–Jewish Relations on Trial: “Uhry has romantic, nostalgic ideas of Southern Jewish culture. I’m pretty critical of him.” “I’m clearly in a strange position of agreeing with a lot of what the Nation of Islam has to say…” In fact, Dr. Melnick was asked directly whether he felt Frank was really guilty. He answered, “I studied all I could and I can’t figure it out still.” Dr. Melnick says of the Nation of Islam book: “They say this really great thing about how Frank has been used, how Frank has been picked up as this 1915 Jewish martyr who then we used to read backwards into Southern history to say Jews have always been in parallel position to African-Americans. It’s not a defensible story. As a Jewish-American raised on stories of victimhood and vulnerability, I recognize the way these
stories are used for sympathy. The Frank case is a zero-sum battle. If Frank didn’t do it, someone black had to do it.”

Journalist Steve Oney is the ADL expert on the case. He penned a book
of 742 pages titled The Dead Shall Rise:“Uhry took dramatic license to bring the story to life. It’s a play. It’s not a history. It’s a play based on facts. I don’t think Alfred Uhry would tell you it’s the truth. It’s the truth as they see it, as they dramatized it.”

Alfred Uhry was asked by an interviewer, “What do you
hope people will bring away from this musical?”
UHRY: “If people are touched, I’ve done my job. This is risky. Sometimes
I think, ‘OK, this time they’re going to catch me, I have no talent, they’re going to nail me for the fraud I am.’”
EXACTLY.

In 2019, Pennsylvania College Students at Point Park University in Pittsburgh “rejected the Alfred Uhry play PARADE and the school CANCELLED its performance. For
years Uhry, the writer of the movie Driving Miss Daisy, has promoted PARADE as the ‘true story’ of the Leo Frank case.” According to the Jewish Chronicle, “some Point
Park students...took issue with the show’s conclusion that implies that Jim Conley, a black janitor and Frank’s main accuser, was the actual perpetrator of the crimes...”
Students at Point Park determined that they would not be
a part of racist propaganda.

If one reads the old newspapers, one will not see any mobs or read about any anti-Semitism.  Nowhere can it be found in the original newspapers that there was a “mob outside of the courtroom shouting antisemitic slurs,” as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has promoted for decades with absolutely no proof. Even Frank’s “savior,” Gov. John Slaton, acknowledged that reality and the fact that the Jewish people were respected members of society in Georgia at the time. The religion of Leo Frank played no role in his guilty verdict or his death sentence (execution by hanging) or his lynching. The facts of the murder case and the cache of damning evidence pointed convincingly to Frank having committed a reprehensible crime. Oddly enough, it was Frank’s own mother who brought religion into the trial by embarrassing herself in court with the shouting of anti-Christian slurs at the prosecutor, Hugh Dorsey.

Author Steve Oney is considered by the ADL to be their top authority. He reported: “To the extent that there was bias in the coverage, it was mostly in Frank’s favor…” He goes on to state that Atlanta’s newspapers, “evincing the prejudices of the time, ridiculed the state’s star witness—a black factory janitor named Jim Conley…”
In fact, in the face of damning evidence Atlanta’s media insisted upon Frank’s innocence and sought to reinforce how much integrity he had as the leader of B’nai B’rith. The three Georgian papers, all with Jewish editors, went along with Frank’s defense team in their racist desire to pin the crime on two separate African American men.

The play PARADE refuses to acknowledge the evidence of Leo Frank’s guilt in this horrible crime.