It’s easy to find books about how Whiteness is the original sin, the root of all evil, the great genocidal contamination that wiped out innocent people who were living in noble savagery before the White Supremacists came and LITERALLY MURDERED them. It’s not quite so easy to find books explaining why White Supremacy is a Good Thing, but there are plenty of them out there. If you expand your search to blogs, you’ll find quite a few White Supremacist sites on Substack and other free speech-friendly corners of the web.

What’s less common is a measured, reasoned examination of what Whiteness means, where the concept originated, and what Whiteness will look like in the future. Thankfully, my friend Constantin von Hoffmeister has stepped up to the plate with his latest book, The Fate of White America. If you’re tired of breast-beating laments or chest-thumping declarations of superiority, you’ll find this book a marvelous antidote.

Whiteness makes its debut in 1758, when Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus drew up the four subspecies of H. sapiens. Alongside the copper-complected H. Americanus, the “grave, haughty, and covetous” H. Asiaticus, and the dark-skinned and frizzy-haired H. Afer, he described:

But, as Constantin notes, Whiteness really takes off on the post-Revolutionary American continent. Whiteness reminded the new Americans of their European heritage even after their break with the British Crown. The definition of “Whiteness” expanded over the years to include Irish, Italian, and Eastern European immigrants who were neither Anglo-Saxon nor Protestant. While our founding documents explicitly rejected nobility and the idea of American kings, America’s social registers were largely reserved for WASPs.

Unlike Europe, America imported a sizable African slave population and inherited a land that contained a large number of indigenous Indians. This gave European-Americans an Other by which they could define themselves. Europeans more often Othered their neighbors by language or religion rather than skin tone. Europe has seen a sharp spike in non-European immigration since Windrush and the rise of the EU, but it is of comparatively recent vintage. From our inception, White Americans have been dealing with a sizable population of non-White people.

To be fair, White Supremacy—the idea that White people were inherently superior to non-Whites—was the default setting for most of America’s history. But the identity of Whiteness, convoluted and ambiguous though it may be, still remains. For some it remains a reminder of ancient evil. Others see it as the flowering of a great and powerful people. Few want to consider the possibility that these states of being are not mutually exclusive.

There’s no denying that relations between White and non-White people in America have frequently been tense and even violent. But this has more to do with technology than genetics. The Bantu Migration that brought the ancestors of many of today’s Africans into central and southern Africa happened soon after Cameroonian tribes developed iron ploughs and spears. Today the hunter-gatherer Twa and Bushmen are found only in a few isolated areas, much as indigenous Americans were driven into reservations. Also consider the fate of the indigenous Ainu during Japan’s colonization of Hokkaido.

This is not intended as a justification, just a bare fact about a hard situation. We are quite capable of feeling guilt about the atrocities committed during colonialism. That is why we wrap them up in pretty phrases like “civilizing the savages” or “bringing democracy to the benighted.” Or why we distance ourselves from those evils by rejecting our heritage altogether.

Once we prayed and put up totems and crosses to ward against evil. Today we behave as if our slogans and yard signs can somehow heal old wounds, as if by rejecting our ancestors we can absolve ourselves from our past while still holding on to the advantages their bloodshed won for us. But what results is racism turned inward instead of outward; a loathing of people who share our appearance and language but who do not share our beliefs and ethics.

Today we see new identities popping up every other day. Young people identify themselves by sexual preferences, gender presentation, diagnosed and self-diagnosed medical conditions, weight, height, neurodiversity, and a whole host of other markers that tell them and their peers who they are and what they want. But behind all these flags, slogans and logos we find a remarkable sameness of opinions. There are a wide range of labels to choose from, but only a very few acceptable thoughts.

In an ideal bureaucratic society, all parts are interchangeable. Their idea of “Diversity” can be seen in the brightly-colored “Corporate Memphis” graphic designs so beloved of contemporary HR and marketing departments. Interchangeable, faceless individuals perform tasks. Their skin tone, hair color and clothing is the only thing that sets them apart. The only identities that matter to a bureaucracy are “enthusiastic consumer” and “compliant employee.”

The Fate of White America provides a very different vision of identity.

The fragmentation of identity can provide camouflage for a monoculture; it creates the illusion of diversity where none exists. Organically defined identities rooted in time and place are more lasting and more satisfying. At times different communities living in close proximity to each other can build up lingering grudges and hostilities. But they can also build close friendships and cross-cultural engagement. Boundaries can make those engagements and friendships possible. You cannot share cultures if you do not already possess one.

We are imperfect beings living in an imperfect universe. We take the good and try as much as we can to avoid the bad. We cannot create a One-size-fits-all America by getting rid of “Whiteness” any more than we can wave a wand and make non-White America vanish. Instead of top-down solutions based on lofty ideals, we should focus on the practical and the pragmatic.

America has been multicultural since the first settlers landed. We have not always dealt with each other fairly; there’s certainly room for improvement in our race relations. But we must admit there is more engagement and understanding between America’s different ethnic groups than at any time in the past. We are in a place where we can build bridges from a position of mutual trust and understanding. We can work to improve the diverse society America has always had, or we can waste our time in performative self-loathing or self-aggrandizement.

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The peoples of Europe emerged through repeated migrations, conquests, alliances, and acts of assimilation. The arrival of Yamnaya-associated steppe peoples transformed the continent’s earlier farming societies. Later the English population rose from Brythonic, Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Norman roots. Ethnicity cannot be wiped away by fiat, but neither can it be set in stone as an eternal ideal. We cannot RETVRN to a White America that never existed, or to a pre-mass immigration Europe. We cannot escape multiculturalism, but neither should we worship it.

Twenty-sixth century America and Europe will look very different than our world of today. Our languages, our religions, our cultures will have mixed, matched, and clashed in ways that we can neither imagine nor anticipate. Our words will seem as strange and distant to them as the Elizabethan English of Shakespeare sounds to us today. Some of our dialects may become mutually unintelligible new languages. Others may be gone entirely, like the lost melodies of many Child ballads.

Will there be White people? A time traveler would almost certainly see people whom we would call “White” today. It is anybody’s guess as to how they might view their ethnicity. New ethnicities may move into new enclaves and claim the land for their own. The blending of different groups will create new ethnicities the way Whiteness transformed Europeans into Americans.

If I were going to place a bet on one group of White Americans surviving, I’d put my chips on the Amish. The decline and fall of an oil-driven society will barely touch the most conservative groups. They have been tilling the soil and harvesting their crops without the petroleum fertilizers that make corporate agriculture possible. They also have large families, something that we rarely see even among the most ardent self-proclaimed White Supremacists.

As our Hispanic population grows, I would expect Americans in 2600 to move away from the British “One Drop” rule and toward the complicated charts that defined ethnicity and social position in Colonial Spain. I also expect that 26th Century American will have a large admixture of Spanish words and phrases, much as al-Andalus incorporated a fair bit of Arabic into what became modern Spanish and medieval French combined Latin with Gaulish and Frankish influences.

This, ultimately, is the fate of White America: neither preservation in amber nor disappearance without a trace, but transformation. We can transmit memories, customs, stories, and ideals, but we cannot dictate what distant descendants will make of them. Constantin’s hearth may survive, though the people gathered around it will almost certainly understand themselves differently. We can plant seeds; history and fate will determine which of them grow.

Overall, I give Constantin’s book my highest recommendation. You may not agree with everything he writes, but you’ll find yourself thinking about White America in a different way. Given our various dysfunctional takes on Whiteness, The Fate of White America is an invaluable, carefully researched and intellectual diamond amidst an ever-growing heap of dung.

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In 1913 Atlanta, like today, the jury was expected to find the defendant guilty only if the evidence proved their guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Luther Rosser immediately set out to instill as much doubt as possible in the minds of the jurors.

His first witness, Dr. Leroy Childs, called into question Dr. Harris’s assertion that Mary had eaten her breakfast between 30 and 45 minutes before meeting her death. Upon viewing the vial of undigested cabbage, Dr. Childs said “I have seen cabbage less changed by the digestive juices than that which had been in a person’s stomach for 12 hours.”^[2]

In his cross-examination, Hugh Dorsey showed a surprising knowledge of medicine and chemistry.

Dorsey: You say you can find free hydrochloric acid in the stomach without the presence of food?

Childs:Yes…

D: Do you know the Eihwald test breakfast?

C: Yes.

D: Of what does it consist?

C: A slice of apple, a slice of bread, and six ounces of water.

D: “After this breakfast has been given, can any hydrochloric acid be found in the stomach?

C: It depends entirely upon the glands.

D: I’m not talking about the glands. I’m talking of a perfectly normal stomach.

C: The acidity would be about two-tenths of a dram.

D: Give me the total acidity in degrees, doctor.

C: You are getting out of my line and into the realm of chemistry or laboratory work. I am not familiar with the degrees…

D: Suppose, doctor, that this cabbage I have here in this vial was taken from a normal stomach with no part of the cabbage in the smaller intestine, and, upon removal of the stomach, it was found that combined hydrochloric acid was present in 32 degrees, what would you say as to how long the substance had been in the stomach before death?

C: I couldn’t tell within an hour and a half of the time.^[3]

Dorsey spent some time learning the finer points of medical forensics because he recognized the importance of Harris’s testimony. According to several eyewitnesses, Leo Frank was home for lunch by 1:30 p.m. on the day of the murder. If Mary Phagan died between 12:30 and 12:45, that would place Frank in the building during her murder. By his own admission, he left the National Pencil Company shortly before 1:00.

Few modern forensic scientists would estimate the time of death so narrowly based on a single vial of undigested cabbage. In addition to stomach contents, they could check for potassium levels in the eye, body temperature, rigor mortis, lividity, and toxicology and histology reports. Dr. Harris had nothing to rely on but stomach contents which he tested rigorously to the highest medical standards of 1913.

We think ourselves scientifically advanced. The residents of 1913 Atlanta also felt that way. Leo Frank got back to his home in an electric streetcar. The Franks had not yet bought an automobile because, like many young Atlanta couples, they were living on a modest income. But Henry Ford’s recently released Model T used assembly line production to lower the cost and make automobiles affordable even to middle-class homeowners. Earlier in the year, the U.S. Army established the 1^st Aero Squadron, a unit dedicated solely to aviation.

On the Sunday before Childs gave his testimony, another trial witness, Deputy Sheriff W.W. “Boots” Rogers, was attacked by a rabid dog while riding his motorcycle. A generation earlier, Rogers would have died a horrible death. But thanks to the Pasteur Treatment, a ten-day series of injections, Rogers survived. Frank’s jurors lived in a world that their grandparents could scarcely have imagined. Dorsey knew they would take a medical specialist’s word very seriously and fought tenaciously to defend Harris’s conclusions.

Rosser’s second witness, Pinkerton detective Harry Scott, was one of the men responsible for interrogating Conley during his various affidavits. As the Atlanta Georgian described Scott’s time on the stand:

The State’s case rested on a man who provided four different affidavits. As Rosser walked Scott through the different versions of Conley’s story, he reminded the jury that the prosecution’s star witness only came to his final affidavit after long hours with detectives and investigators—and that his most shocking claims against Leo Frank only came out after prolonged questioning.

Rosser was well aware that Jim Conley came before the jury with several disadvantages. He might not have been able to trip him up during cross-examination, but he was going to keep hammering on Conley’s credibility.

Friday’s session opened with Daisy Hopkins, a woman Jim Conley reported seeing in the company of Leo Frank and C.B. Dalton. Hopkins acknowledged that she had worked at National Pencil Company from October 1911 and June 1912. But she testified that she only knew Frank and Dalton by sight; she had never spoken with Frank and only knew Dalton because he was at the house where she stayed once.

On cross-examination, Dorsey noted that Miss Hopkins had previously been married and that she had been jailed for “immorality.”

Dorsey: You’ve never been in jail, in this county or anywhere else?

Hopkins: I said I’ve never been in jail anywhere.

D: Do you see this man here? [points to Deputy N.A. Gardner]. Didn’t he get you out of jail recently?

H: No, he never got me out of jail; I’ve never been in jail.

D. Do you mean to say that this man, N.A. Garner, never got you out of jail?

H: No, he never got me out of jail!

D: Well, who did, then?

H: Mr. Smith.

D: Who is Mr. Smith?

H: He’s the lawyer, W.H. Smith.

D: You mean the one who is representing James Conley, the man sitting right over there?

H: Yes, sir; he’s the man.

D: What were you there for; wasn’t it for immoral actions.

H: No, people told tales on me and that got me in jail.

D: Weren’t you there for reasons of immorality.

H: That’s what they said.^[5]

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Rosser had better luck with W.M. Matthews, the motorman who brought Mary Phagan into downtown Atlanta. Matthews explained to the jury that on April 26, 1913:

Matthews also testified that “the little Epps boy” was not sitting with Mary and verified that he recognized Mary Phagan as the girl who got in his car when he saw her body at the undertaker’s. George Epps said he was riding with Mary Phagan on April 26 and claimed that she said she was afraid of Leo Frank. If he was lying about the day of the murder, that would go a long way toward discrediting his testimony about Frank’s character.

Matthews’ testimony also complicated the prosecution’s timeline. If he was correct, Mary did not step off the streetcar until about 12:10. Since the National Pencil Company was another block and a half away, she could not have reached the factory until several minutes later. Dorsey questioned Matthews strenuously about his memory and tried to shed doubt on his claims. But Matthews held as steadfast to his testimony as Jim Conley had to his. The next witness, conductor W.T. Hollis, confirmed Matthews’ testimony.

Rosser then moved on to Albert Kauffman, an Atlanta architect who came carrying blueprints. Albert McKnight, the cook’s husband, had claimed that he was in the kitchen when Leo Frank came into the living room in a state of panic. But based on the blueprints of the Frank home, he could not have seen into the living room from the kitchen. Kauffman then showed the layout of the National Pencil Company’s second floor and stated it would be almost impossible for Frank to see or hear people coming in or out of his office.

But perhaps the most significant comment in his testimony was his note that there was a five-foot-wide chute to the basement on the first floor. Its opening was just a few yards from where Mary Phagan’s body was found. Conley had stated that he, with Frank’s assistance, had dragged Phagan’s body to the elevator and took it to the basement. But there were already questions about this part of the story.

Conley also claimed that he defecated in the shaft earlier that morning. When investigators took the elevator down to the basement to see the body, they were greeted with the unmistakable smell of crushed feces. While the investigators shrugged it off, many later analysts have noted that the “shit in the shaft” suggests that Conley did not bring Phagan down to the basement with Frank’s assistance. This raises legitimate issues about testimony that was used to convict Leo Frank and later cited to justify his lynching.

It is entirely possible that Frank called on Conley to get rid of Mary Phagan’s body and he did so through the chute. Conley would have known very well that his choices were cooperation or hanging for the crime after Frank reported he saw one of the company’s negroes strangle a little girl. He would have every incentive to go along and, later, to tell his story in a way that minimized his culpability.

But it is also possible that Conley was indeed a very skilled liar who managed to get away with murder by pinning it on the boss. This is the great question that faces every Leo Frank researcher. We are left with court records where many of the most important witnesses are almost certainly not telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. We are left to determine which parts of each account withstand scrutiny and to argue among ourselves where those lines should be drawn.

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N.V. Darley, the assistant plant superintendent, noted that the door leading to the chute had been nailed shut since the first of January. That door was found broken open shortly after Mary Phagan’s murder. Darley also noted that there was a second trap door in the hallway to that chute, which opened onto a steep stairway to the basement. And he further stated that the door was nailed up again a few days after the crime by persons unknown.

After challenging the State’s reconstruction of the crime scene, the defense returned to Frank’s alleged conduct toward women. E.F. Holloway, the day watchman, testified that he had never seen any women in Frank’s office besides Mrs. Frank and her mother. He refuted a claim from Conley that Frank had a woman in “white shoes and white stockings” in the factory last Thanksgiving; Reuben Arnold added further that this seemed inappropriate garb to wear on a day when it was snowing.

Dorsey started his questioning by claiming Holloway had earlier sought to influence witnesses. He claimed that Holloway had asked Kendrick, the former night watchman, to swear that Frank regularly called the night watchman as he had called Newt Lee. Dorsey also claimed that L.P. Whitfield, a Pinkerton operative, found a bloody club at the factory the day after Holloway said, “to come around the next day and he was sure the detective would find something.”^[7]

Holloway denied both allegations indignantly, but the Georgian still felt that portions of his testimony were “badly shaken.” It is impossible to know how the jurors felt about the exchange. What is clear is that Dorsey considered Holloway important enough to attack his credibility rather than simply accept his testimony.

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Saturday’s half-day session opened with George Epps. Reuben Arnold asked Epps why, when he was interviewed by John Minar of the Georgian on April 26, Epps said that he had seen her Thursday last, then later said under oath that he rode with Mary Phagan on the train. Epps denied talking to the reporter, claiming that his sister Vera did all the talking for that interview. The defense then brought Minar to the stand. He insisted that George and Vera were both in the room during the interview and that both had answered his questions.

If Minar was correct, and he had no reason to lie, Epps had changed his story about one of the central facts of his claim. Could the jury rely on George’s claim that Mary Phagan told him she was afraid of Leo Frank? The defense team hoped they would not.

Herbert Schiff, the assistant superintendent at National Pencil Company, was the final witness of the day. Frank contended that he was doing the week’s financial sheets on the day of Mary Phagan’s murder, and remained engrossed in that task until he left. Schiff identified the figures and notations on that day’s sheet as Frank’s handwriting, and noted that it appeared identical to the writing on every financial sheet for the prior year. Reuben Arnold, to prove the point, brought out each of those sheets.

Schiff also showed the complex calculations required to fill out the sheet properly. The implication was clear; no man who had just committed a heinous crime could complete this work without error or irregularities. After getting confirmation that Schiff, like Holloway, had never seen any women in the factory on Saturdays except Mrs. Frank, Arnold then asked, “Do you know Jim Conley?”

When he replied yes, Arnold asked “What sort of negro is he?”

Schiff said, “There isn’t much to him.”

Assistant prosecutor Frank Hooper objected to these questions and moved they be stricken from the record. Arnold then changed his line of questioning.

A: What work did he do?

S: Truck and ran the elevator.

A: Do you know his character and was it good or bad?

S: Very bad.

A: Would you believe him under oath?

S: I would not.^[8]

After a bit more bantering between Schiff and Dorsey, the proceedings adjourned until the next Monday. Rosser had not produced a dramatic confession or exposed a fatal contradiction in the prosecution’s theory. Instead, he had chipped away at witness after witness. The timeline looked less certain. The forensic evidence less conclusive. The reconstruction of the crime scene more complicated. Whether the defense had cut enough strands from the State’s rope to create reasonable doubt would soon become apparent.

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^[1] O.B. Keeler, “State Sees Bits of Evidence as Rope Strands,” Atlanta Georgian, Saturday, August 9, 1913.

^[2] “Scott Hits Conley’s Story,” Atlanta Georgian, Thursday, August 7, 1913.

^[3] “Dorsey Forces Childs to Admit Certain Portions of His Testimony Could Not Be Considered Expert.” Atlanta Constitution, August 8, 1913. 2.

^[4] “Conley’s Story Put in Peculiar Light When Defense Calls Scott,” Atlanta Georgian, August 8, 1913. 3.

^[5] “Hopkins Woman Denies Charges Made By Dalton and Jim Conley; Is Forced to Admit Untruths.” Atlanta Constitution, August 9, 1913. 3.

^[6] “Leo Frank Murder Trial Testimony” at Leo Frank Case Archive. https://www.leofrank.org/trial-and-evidence/murder-trial-testimony/.

^[7] “Foreman of Factory Gives Startling New Evidence for Frank,” Atlanta Georgian, August 8, 1913. 1.

^[8] “Financial Sheets Are Shown To Prove Frank’s Composure; Herbert Schiff, Office Assistant, Tells of Intricacies of Work on Tragic Day.” Atlanta Georgian, August 9, 1913. 2.

At 9:42 a.m., Hugh Dorsey called Jim Conley to the witness stand and discovered Conley had not yet arrived at the courthouse. After a telephone call, Conley arrived with his lawyer, William Smith, as well as Chief of Police James Beavers and Chief of Detectives Newport Lanford. Lanford removed Conley’s handcuffs and walked him to the witness stand.

After he was sworn in, Dorsey began his questioning. Conley affirmed that he was in the factory on the day of Mary Phagan’s death. He also said that he had served as lookout on other Saturdays and holidays while Frank received visits from other women at his office. The first edition of the August 4, 1913 Atlanta Journal says delicately that Conley “accused Frank of perversion.” Steve Oney provides us with the transcript’s recollection of Conley’s testimony.

Today very few would raise an eyebrow at the idea of consenting adults performing oral sex. In 1913 Atlanta cunnilingus was a felony. In that passage, Jim Conley accused Leo Frank of two extremely serious crimes—murder and oral sodomy. The Atlanta Journal editors had good reason to be circumspect. In 1913, federal obscenity laws under the Comstock Act severely restricted the mailing of sexually explicit material, and publishers generally avoided printing detailed descriptions of sexual conduct.

By modern standards Conley’s testimony seems restrained; in 1913 Atlanta it ventured into territory many newspapers considered unprintable. To an upstanding Atlanta citizen of the time, allegations of oral sodomy would be as shocking as allegations of child molestation are today. The allegations of “lechery” and “perversion” seem like prosecutorial abuse today. Even then there were judicial leaders who felt Dorsey had overstepped his limits. The “lechery” evidence became one of the principal grounds on which critics argued that Frank deserved a new trial.

Rosser remained silent as Dorsey questioned Conley about moving Mary Phagan’s body and ended with inquiries about other women whom Conley had seen while he was keeping watch for Frank. He apparently thought it best to break Conley down during the upcoming cross-examination than to keep the court focused on the explosive allegations.

After Dorsey concluded his examination, Rosser requested a brief recess to prepare strategy. When he came back, he started with a series of polite, jovial exchanges. As the Atlanta Constitution described it:

Rosser’s initial line of questioning appeared to be an effort to demonstrate Conley’s limited intelligence. In those first few minutes, he also established that Jim was frequently in debt and that he often left through the cellar door on payday to avoid his creditors at the front door. Since the defense contended that Conley killed Phagan for the $1.20 she had just collected, those were potentially devastating claims.

While we will never know Rosser’s strategy, it appears that he was hoping that Conley would slip up as he relaxed and lowered his guard. If he was hoping to show by his opening that Conley was too stupid to invent such an elaborate story, he may have instead reinforced the convinced the jury that Conley was too stupid to remember a fabricated story.

Rosser then turned to the heart of the matter. Conley went on to describe the different women who had come to visit Frank while Conley stood guard. As the court broke for lunch, a journalist heard Frank tell his friends that the testimony was the “the vilest and most amazing pack of lies ever conceived in the perverted brain of a wicked human being.”^[3]

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The post-lunch session began with Judge Roan removing all women from the courtroom save Frank’s wife and mother. After Conley’s earlier statements, and ongoing discussions of prostitution and lechery, the judge feared the proceeding might touch upon subjects unsuitable for ladies. But much of the afternoon testimony was in a less sensational vein. Rosser repeatedly pressed Conley on the details of his story, while Conley responded, “I don’t know” or “I don’t remember.” This excerpt will give some idea of Monday afternoon’s proceeding:

Rosser had hoped to press Conley into a contradiction that would discredit his testimony. Instead, he found himself facing a witness who simply refused to crack under intense pressure. Conley did exactly what a man in his position should do—and exactly what Rosser thought impossible for a man of his mental capabilities.

There have been recurring claims that the prosecution “coached” Conley to frame Leo Frank; the defense counsel insinuated as much throughout the trial. But coaching covers a wide range of conduct. Any competent lawyer prepares witnesses before they testify. “Tell the truth. If you aren’t sure, don’t guess. If you don’t remember, say ‘I don’t remember.’” Ethical issues arise when a lawyer knowingly helps a client or witness to commit perjury.

The session ended with Conley moved at last to the Tower at Rosser’s request. William Smith sent up a steak dinner to help Jim recover from a rough day. The teams on both sides spent the evening thinking about how they would handle tomorrow’s interrogation.

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Rosser started the Tuesday session with the same dogged intensity he had used throughout the prior day’s questioning. Once again, Conley resisted all his efforts. Rosser made a last effort to return to the day of Mary Phagan’s murder, hoping that he could at last catch Conley in a contradiction. But Conley repeated the answers he gave Dorsey almost verbatim.

When the court returned from lunch, Judge Roan dismissed the jury at Rosser and Arnold’s request. Unable to shake Conley or undermine his credibility before the jury, the defense now wanted much of his account stricken from the record. Specifically, they sought to withdraw their cross-examination of Conley, along with his testimony that he acted as watch for Frank and that he was “not built like other men.”

Dorsey objected strenuously, telling the judge “This evidence goes to show who killed little Mary Phagan. Our case if this evidence is expunged will have been done inestimable damage.” Arnold, in response, said “The person who is hurt is the defendant. He is done grievous injury by this vile evidence.”^[5] Judge Roan took the matter under advisement and stated he would decide the issue later, then returned the jury.

Rosser immediately resumed his attack on Conley’s credibility, returning to statements the witness had made the previous day. Frank Hooper, Dorsey’s assistant prosecutor, requested that Conley be allowed to read the transcript of yesterday’s testimony, stating:

Rosser replied scornfully, “It’s not superhuman for the witness to tell the truth twice.” After some debate, Roan ruled for the defense with the understanding that Rosser’s questions would not be argumentative or aimed to impeach the witness directly on his own testimony.^[6] But Conley remained unbowed as the cross-examination entered its eighth hour. Finally, as the day’s proceedings were wrapping up, Rosser asked for the jury to be withdrawn a second time.

After the jury was removed, Rosser requested that Conley be held in solitary confinement and that nobody be allowed to talk with him. This was presented as an effort to prevent anyone from coaching Conley overnight, but Rosser certainly knew that it would also increase the psychological pressure on Conley. William Smith helped keep Jim’s spirits up by sending another supper over to the jailhouse.

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After Rosser finished his cross-examination on Wednesday morning, Hugh Dorsey asked a few closing questions. At 11:10 a.m., Conley was excused. The full-page headline on page 4 of the August 6, 1913 Georgian announced:

When the court reconvened at 2 p.m., Judge Roan announced his decision regarding Conley’s testimony.

Roan refused to enter into the record testimony from Mary Phagan’s friend Walter Epps, who had claimed she was frightened of Leo Frank because of his constant flirting. As for Mr. Dalton, the man who purportedly brought women to the National Pencil Company on weekends, Roan ruled that his testimony would be “inadmissible in anything except in support of the negro Conley.” ^[7]

The remainder of the day’s testimony came from Dr. Henry F. Harris, who had conducted the autopsy on Mary Phagan. Most of his discussion focused on the cabbage found in her stomach; Harris insisted that Phagan had died within 45 minutes of eating her breakfast. But overall, the ending was quiet as the prosecution rested its case.

Both sides understood that Conley’s testimony was the key to winning or losing this trial. Dorsey took an enormous gamble on making Conley the pillar of the prosecution’s case. Rosser took a slightly less risky but no less treacherous path when he chose to confront the lechery allegations rather than objecting to them immediately. Few would have expected that an uneducated black laborer would be able to withstand an extended grilling from a lawyer of Rosser’s stature. In discrediting Conley, Rosser hoped to discredit not only the allegations but the entire case.

Judge Roan recognized the problems with the allegations about Frank’s womanizing. He admitted that he would likely have shut that line of questioning down had the defense objected immediately. But because they only responded after over a day of questioning Conley on the subject, Roan felt that courtroom rules required that the allegations remain in the transcript. As he pointed out, the bell could not be unrung: the jurors had already heard hours of comment on the topic and were unlikely to forget it simply because it was scrubbed from the record.

Does that mean Rosser made a mistake? It’s easy to play armchair quarterback when you already know how the play ended. Based on the information he had on hand, he felt the risk worth taking. Discrediting the witnesses to Frank’s bad character would weaken the case while allowing him to introduce his long list of witnesses proclaiming Frank’s virtues. He assumed he could trap Conley in enough contradictions to convince the jury that he could not be trusted. At the time, few attorneys would have disagreed.

We are still debating whether Conley’s testimony was a truthful recollection or a carefully constructed series of falsehoods. That argument will likely continue. What we cannot dispute is that Conley survived cross-examination with his credibility intact. Rosser and Arnold were left with the unenviable task of persuading twelve jurors that the witness they failed to break was simply a very well-trained liar.

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^[1] Oney, 241.

^[2] “Amazing Testimony of Conley Marks Crucial Point of Trial; Says Frank Admitted Crime,” Atlanta Constitution, August 5, 1913. 3.

^[3] “Conley’s Story the Vilest and Most Amazing Pack of Lies Ever Conceived,” Atlanta Journal (First Edition), August 4, 1913. 1.

^[4] “Frank Calm and Jurors Tense While Conley Tells His Gastcy (sic) Tale,” Alanta Georgian, August 4, 1913. 8.

^[5] Oney, 252-253.

^[6] “Witness Has Undergone Eight Hours’ Grilling,” Atlanta Georgian (Evening Edition), August 5, 1913. 4-5.

^[7] “Judge’s Decision Admits Conley Testimony, in Full,” Atlanta Constitution, August 7, 1913. 3.

Leo Frank’s defense team began the trial with a calculated risk. At the swearing-in of witnesses, they provided the names of many prominent Atlanta Jews, as well as faculty members and graduates from Cornell University. They were expected to testify to Leo Frank’s character and reassure the jury that Frank was not the sort of man to commit such a heinous murder.

Introducing these witnesses would highlight the differences between Frank’s reputation and Conley’s checkered past. But by introducing character witnesses, the defense opened the way for the prosecution to offer rebuttal witnesses. Rumors that Frank had behaved inappropriately toward factory girls had already appeared in the newspapers. Dorsey could now bring that evidence before the jury for their consideration.

There is no perfect legal strategy, only different tradeoffs. Rosser understood how his socially awkward client would likely be read by an Atlanta jury. Character witnesses might humanize the defendant and counter the impression that Frank was cold, aloof, or “just not right.” Those benefits, Rosser evidently believed, would outweigh the damage the prosecution might do with their rebuttal. Given that he called over one hundred character witnesses, he apparently felt it best to let others speak on Frank’s behalf as much as possible.

This strategy came at a significant cost. Dorsey took every opportunity to comment about Frank’s alleged sexual misdeeds, including insinuations that he was homosexual and that police had caught him molesting a young girl in the park. With the benefit of hindsight, we can debate whether Rosser made the right strategic choice. He did not have that luxury. Ultimately, we will never know how much good Rosser’s decision did for Frank’s case or how much the extensive commentary on his bad behavior influenced the jury.

By noon the jury had been selected and sworn in. The afternoon opened with the trial’s first witness, Mary Phagan’s mother. Dressed in a black hat and veil, Fannie Coleman testified about the last day of her daughter’s life while one of Dorsey’s assistants displayed the bloodstained clothes Mary had been wearing when her body was found. Overwhelmed with emotion, Coleman was soon excused.

Next to testify was Walter Epps, the boy who told investigators to Phagan was unnerved by Frank’s unwanted advances. Dorsey’s questions on that subject were quickly stifled by Rosser, whose objections were sustained. But Rosser’s efforts to question Epps’ claim that he had waited in vain for Mary until 4:30 p.m. on April 26 failed.

The steps leading up to a criminal trial are like a chess game. Each side carefully maneuvers to ensure it begins the trial in the strongest possible position. Once the trial begins, the proceedings are more like a boxing match. Rosser and Dorsey were two seasoned brawlers trading blows. Each expected the other would land a few hard shots. Each hoped to emerge victorious when the jury announced its verdict. Both were expecting a long, hard-fought battle.

The third witness, night watchman Newt Lee, was important to both the prosecution and defense. Newt’s testimony was potentially devastating for either side. What had begun as a contentious trial now moved closer to open hostility. Rosser had, understandably, been relatively gentle with the newspaper boy and with Phagan’s grieving mother. Newt Lee endured nearly five hours of aggressive, confrontational questioning.

Rosser sought to cast suspicion on Lee and implied that he was the actual author of the murder notes. He tried to show that Newt had been coached to lie by police detectives. He asked leading questions and returned repeatedly to the same themes in an effort to trip Lee up. And Lee weathered the storm, impressing both journalists and the crowd. The jury had now heard Lee describe Frank’s extreme nervousness on the day of Phagan’s murder, as well as his tale of the manipulated timecard.

Tough cross-examination also comes with risks. If the witness slips up or cracks under pressure, they appear evasive or dishonest. But if the witness holds steadfast despite hours of questioning, they now appear to be forthright and truthful. A hard cross-examination either leaves the witness discredited or more credible than ever.

In the case of Lee, and later of Conley, Rosser faced another challenge. Most white Atlantans had no trouble assuming a negro would lie. But if the negro stuck to his story without wavering, many courtroom observers would be inclined to think he was honest. Surely no poor black laborer would be able to remember all the details of a lie under hours of relentless interrogation. They would slip up somewhere, then entangle themselves in new lies as they desperately tried to keep their story straight.

Rosser’s legal strategy was not unsound. In fact, it may have been his only realistic strategy. Lee could describe Frank’s demeanor on the day of the murder and inspire doubts about his timecard. Conley’s testimony was critical. He alone could tell the jury how the murder happened and who did it. He was the sole person who could place Frank at the scene of the crime and describe what happened on April 26.

Discrediting Conley and Lee would tear the heart out of the prosecution’s case. Without them, the prosecution was left with a factory manager who was in his office on a day and at a time he was usually there. Outside of Conley’s testimony, there was no direct evidence linking Frank to the murder, and there were over a hundred witnesses ready to testify to Frank’s good character.

Few witnesses, truthful or otherwise, could withstand hours of cross-examination under one of Dixie’s most noted defense attorneys. If Rosser could lead either man to slip up, there was little chance Dorsey could sustain a conviction. But when neither man broke under pressure, Rosser’s bare-knuckle tactics strengthened rather than weakened their credibility. Like his list of character witnesses, his aggressive cross-examination was a smart legal attack that backfired.

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Rosser next challenged one of the prosecution’s exhibits. A diagram of the National Pencil Company traced Mary’s path into the office, then depicted Leo following Mary into the metal room before carrying her body to the elevator and from there to the basement.

Rosser objected that the display presented these actions as if they were already proven facts rather than the prosecution’s unproven theory of the case. Dorsey responded by citing precedents where judges had previously included similar displays into evidence. States Exhibit A was allowed to remain, albeit with the printed narrative removed.

This exchange reveals the give-and-take of an adversarial trial. Rosser argued the prosecution was treating speculation as established fact. Dorsey responded with legal precedents and argued States Exhibit A merely charted the state’s case. Roan allows the display to remain but removes text that might unfairly prejudice the jury. At face value, this exchange suggests that both sides are presenting their case vigorously and Judge Roan is attempting to accommodate their concerns without bias toward either side.

On Wednesday, July 30, Hugh Dorsey questioned Detective Boots Rogers. The solicitor focused on an important question: had Leo Frank forged Newt Lee’s card to make it appear as though he had left the factory for a period?

Newt Lee’s timecard was one of the prosecution’s most damning pieces of evidence. In and of itself, the forged timecard would not prove that Frank murdered Phagan. But if he deliberately created it, it would show that he was willing to tamper with evidence to interfere with an ongoing investigation. The immediate question would be “why?” The obvious answer, then and now, would be “to cover up his own guilt.”

Frank had access to the time punch machine. As an engineering graduate, he almost certainly possessed the dexterity and technical knowledge to remove the punch from the machine, use it to manually create a new timecard—exactly what police and prosecution were claiming he did—and then put the machine back together. He had the access and the apparent ability. If the police assumed, as they did, that he was involved in Mary Phagan’s murder, he also had a clear motive.

The other suspected killer, Jim Conley, had neither the access nor the apparent technical skills to create a fake timecard. And even if he did, why would Leo Frank later authenticate that altered timecard as legitimate? The fraudulent timecard was one of the only pieces of material evidence that called Frank into suspicion.

After Dorsey concluded questioning, Luther Rosser stepped up for cross-examination. He joked with the audience. He asked how Rogers knew that Frank was “unusually nervous” when he had never met the man before. But he did not ask questions about the timecard.

Rosser’s silence on that matter is noteworthy. As we have already seen and will see later, Rosser was merciless when attacking evidence that might sway a jury. Yet he chose not to pursue the timecard, one of the few pieces of physical evidence against Frank, or to challenge the detectives’ conclusion that it had been altered. Observers might have wondered why the notorious bulldog had gone so easily on Rogers.

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Some might have wondered if Rosser had gone soft on the next cross-examination. But though he treated Grace Hix, a National Pencil Company employee, with the courtesy expected of a southern gentleman, Rosser achieved his goals. Under polite questioning, Miss Hix acknowledged that she had never spoken to Frank and only rarely had seen him chatting with her coworkers. She further noted that many of the girls, including several blondes, regularly combed their hair near the lathe where detectives had purportedly found Mary Phagan’s hairs.

When Detective John Black took the stand, those observers learned that the bulldog still had teeth. Rosser launched a blistering cross-examination, peppering Black with questions about the time Frank arrived at police headquarters, the time the detective reached Frank’s home, and even the color of the tie Frank had supposedly struggled to knot. Then he turned to the time slip.

That evening the Atlanta Georgian printed an Extra edition, as it had often done throughout the Frank trial. The left column headline declared DETECTIVE RETRACTS PART OF HIS STORY UNDER ROSSER ATTACK. Three days into the trial, the consensus was that Wednesday was the best day yet for the defense. As Sidney Ormond of the Atlanta Constitution put it:

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Thursday was largely uneventful, save for a special guest at the defense table. Carrie Appelbaum, widow and shooter of Jerome Appelbaum, was now seated beside the Franks as a guest. The Appelbaum trial had been extensively covered by the Georgian. On Friday, April 25, 1913—one day before Mary Phagan would show up at the National Pencil Company for her pay—Carrie Appelbaum was acquitted by an Atlanta jury. Hugh Dorsey was the prosecutor.

The Appelbaum trial was seen as a slam-dunk for the state. Carrie Appelbaum had been married three times and divorced twice. Her second husband, J.A. Keller, described the former Caledonia Scott as “a pretty good sort of fellow” but also cautioned “she’s her own worst enemy” and described her as “one of the most jealous-hearted creatures alive.”^[4] And her fourth husband died of bullet wounds after Mrs. Appelbaum discovered that he was carrying on a romantic correspondence with a woman in Saginaw, Michigan.

We will never know exactly why the jury chose to acquit Carrie Appelbaum. But for the Atlanta public, the answer was simple: the state lost this trial because of Hugh Dorsey’s incompetence.

The Appelbaum case is often cited as the reason why Dorsey chose to prosecute Frank. He was still stinging from an embarrassing defeat. Rosser and Arnold certainly knew what they were doing when they put her on the bench and when she declared her belief in Frank’s innocence to courtroom journalists. But did Dorsey hope to come back from his recent humiliation by framing an innocent man? For some, the answer is obvious. But the contemporary evidence paints a less clear picture.

Why would Dorsey, a man purportedly fueled by ambition and unscrupulous enough to send an innocent man to the gallows, target a prosperous white man of good reputation—and a man whose family could afford a team of Georgia’s best defense attorneys? Albert Lasker, a Jewish advertising executive who contributed to Frank’s post-trial law fund, donated $100,000 ($3.3m in 2026 dollars). William Smith received $40 ($1,350 in 2026) for his defense of Jim Conley.

If Dorsey wanted to coach his witnesses into convicting Frank, why would he not help Frank craft a devastating story that would point the blame squarely on a poor black laborer? Why did he instead choose to stake his case on the word of a black ex-convict who had already confessed to moving Phagan’s body and writing the notes? Any claim that Dorsey framed Leo Frank must address the question of why he passed over two much easier targets.

The simplest explanation is not always the correct one. Dorsey was no less ambitious than any other prosecutor, and we cannot know why he ultimately believed Conley over Frank. The issues I have raised do not prove or disprove Dorsey’s alleged part in framing Leo Frank. But they do raise the evidentiary bar for those who insist that a respected prosecutor and future governor knowingly charged an innocent man with a capital offense.

Dorsey appeared unshaken by Mrs. Appelbaum’s presence, and Thursday and Friday were largely anticlimactic. Both prosecution and defense had their sights on Saturday afternoon, when the State’s most important witness would be taking the stand.

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^[1] Oney, 211-212.

^[2] Ibid, 220.

^[3] Sidney Ormond, “Bearing of Black and Lee Forms a Study in Contrast,” Atlanta Constitution, July 31, 1913. 4.

^[4] “Former Husband Tells of Her Shooting Scrapes,” Atlanta Georgian, February 27, 1913. 2.

James Dorsey certainly understood that he was taking an enormous gamble by relying on Jim Conley’s testimony. So did Luther Rosser, Frank’s defense attorney. He argued that a slight, bespectacled white man was unlikely to perpetrate a brutal sexual murder many white Southerners would associate with Negroes—particularly Negroes like Jim Conley. They portrayed Conley not just as a drunk and a habitual liar but as a violent sexual predator. Rosser assumed those old Southern prejudices were too deeply rooted for Dorsey to overcome.

It wasn’t a foolish strategy. Most white Southerners in 1913 would be inclined to take the word of a white man over a black man. Conley was not an educated preacher, journalist, or member of Atlanta’s small but growing Black middle class. He fit many of the South’s most enduring racist stereotypes—drunk, shiftless, in debt, and untrustworthy. Conley was also tied to Phagan’s murder by notes he acknowledged writing. And he was Dorsey’s principal witness against a respected and respectable white man.

Today this kind of race-baiting would be seen as highly unethical and would likely lead to disciplinary proceedings. “Nigger” has become the most offensive word in American English, and most Americans have a very dim view of racism. In 1913 Atlanta, Rosser’s claims would be seen by most white Atlantans—and most white Americans—as common sense.

Their primary ethical obligation as defense counsel was to advocate zealously for their client, to the best of their ability, within the laws and rules of the Georgia court system. Ignoring one of the most powerful weapons in their arsenal in a capital murder trial would not only be foolish. Measured by a lawyer’s obligation to his client, it would be a dereliction of duty.

Dorsey believed Conley was telling the truth, or at least most of it. But he did not feel comfortable relying solely on Conley. On June 4, the Atlanta Journal dedicated its front page to a “Sensational Affidavit Made by Minola McKnight, Negro Cook at Home of L. M. Frank.” In that affidavit McKnight claimed:

McKnight’s affidavit provided exactly the kind of corroboration Dorsey was looking for. It lasted less than a day before McKnight publicly repudiated her statement, claiming she had only signed under duress after hours of browbeating and threats from Dorsey and his team. By June 5, detectives publicly stated that they attached “very little importance” to McKnight’s affidavit.^[3]

That same day Lucille Frank broke her silence on the front page of the Georgian. In an open letter accusing Dorsey of torturing witnesses, Mrs. Frank denied the allegations in McKnight’s affidavit, insisted her husband was innocent, and stated:

Dorsey’s attempt to obtain new information through third-degree interrogations had become a public relations disaster. The defense seized on the McKnight affidavit and its subsequent repudiation. Rosser would continue to accuse the prosecution of intimidating witnesses and suppressing evidence before and throughout the trial.

In June 1913 many Atlantans believed Frank was the killer. Many others had doubts, or were inclined to believe Frank was innocent. An attack on Lucille Frank risked making Dorsey look ungentlemanly and could lend credence to the defense’s intimidation claims. Failure to respond could be seen as an acknowledgment the defense’s allegations were true. And if Dorsey had fabricated McKnight’s affidavit and coerced her into signing it, how trustworthy were Conley’s statements?

Dorsey did not address Mrs. Frank’s allegations of torture and coercion in his June 6 remarks to the Atlanta Constitution. He noted that as Leo’s wife, Mrs. Frank would, of course, be among the last to know the facts about her husband’s guilt and among those most inclined to assert his innocence. As Dorsey noted sympathetically:

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On June 7 Lucille, likely with help from Luther Rosser, released a second open letter. This one was even more pugnacious than the first, turning one of Dorsey’s earlier statements against him:

It is noteworthy that Dorsey did not continue the exchange after this. Perhaps he recognized that an ongoing argument would only keep the conversation about witness coercion foregrounded. There was little to gain from an ongoing debate with Frank’s loving wife, and a great deal to lose. But the end result was a public relations victory for Leo Frank’s defense team, which wasted no time in pressing its advantage.

Two days after Lucille Frank’s last letter, Rosser responded with another open letter, a blistering note that insinuated detectives and prosecutors had colluded to shape Conley’s testimony, just as, he alleged, they had created McKnight’s affidavit. But their target was not only the Atlanta public; it was Judge Leonard Roan, Rosser’s former law partner, who would be presiding over the Frank trial.

Rosser wanted to see Conley moved back to “the Tower,” the Old Fulton County jail where Frank was being held. While under lockup, Conley was only allowed to speak with the detectives. By putting Conley back into general population, Rosser hoped that he would make incriminating or embarrassing statements that would go public. He also knew that Sheriff Mangum took a dim view of detectives interfering with testimony and that Dorsey’s team would have far less access, and far less chance to coach their primary witness.

Judge Roan agreed that Conley technically belonged in the Tower and began making efforts to have him moved. At this point Dorsey made what seemed a strange offer; he motioned to release Conley from captivity altogether. His argument—that the prosecution no longer considered Conley a material witness—seemed odd, given that Conley was the state’s principal witness.

But what looked at first inexplicable was actually a brilliant, if convoluted strategy. Dorsey planned to release Conley as a material witness, then immediately re-arrest him and hold him as a suspect. Rosser had two choices. He could argue that Conley was a material witness, and that he should be held to testify against Frank. Or he could argue that Conley should not be held as a suspect and thereby acknowledge that he did not believe Jim Conley had killed Mary Phagan.

Conley was released from his cell, arrested again as soon as he left the building, and returned to custody in his old cell. It was certainly a clever maneuver, one suggesting just how determined Dorsey was to keep Conley beyond the reach of the defense and the press. But it was also risky. Dorsey would soon be making his case before Judge Roan, whose order he had just neatly sidestepped.

On June 13 another lawyer joined the Frank defense team. If Luther Rosser was a pit bull terrier in the courtroom, Reuben Arnold was a gentleman scholar with an extraordinary memory and a gift for cultivating relationships with prosperous and influential Georgians, including Rabbi David Marx. He brought an air of gentility to the proceedings, serving as the velvet glove to Rosser’s iron fist. The next day Dorsey left town with his family for a summer vacation.

The Frank trial, which had been scheduled to begin on June 30, was postponed due to summer heat. The court building was undergoing renovations and the stand-in location had poor ventilation, a serious issue during a Georgia summer. Roan rescheduled the trial for July 28, when the renovations were scheduled to be completed.

But though the case was on temporary hiatus, Frank’s defense team was still working hard. On July 9, Pinkerton agents working for Frank found a pay envelope with Mary Phagan’s number on the factory floor. Rosser theorized that Conley saw Phagan coming in for her paycheck and accidentally killed her during an attempted robbery; if genuine, the envelope suggested he had taken the money while she lay on the factory floor. The next day saw reports of two men who claimed to have evidence that Conley was the murderer.

On Thursday, July 10, the Georgian published an exclusive story of an affidavit in the possession of the lawyers for Leo M. Frank made by W.L. Mincey, an insurance agent. In that affidavit, Mincey declared that he met Conley at Electric Avenue and Carter Street on the afternoon of the murder. Mincey claimed that Conley was intoxicated and had no interest in purchasing an insurance policy. When Mincey approached him, Conley reportedly exclaimed “I have killed a girl to-day; I don’t want to kill nobody else.”^[7]

Meanwhile, a nationwide search was underway for Will Green, a Negro carnival hand who had reportedly claimed that he saw Conley attack Phagan. Green had purportedly been playing craps with Conley on April 26. Conley was losing. When he saw Phagan come in, Conley announced he was going to steal the girl’s money. When Conley began staggering toward Phagan, Green fled. Upon reading of the murder in the morning paper, he left for St. Louis.^[8]

While all these breakthroughs received considerable newspaper coverage, the defense team remained skeptical from the outset. Rosser and Arnold concluded Mincey was an unreliable witness who would not withstand cross-examination. Nobody knew which carnival employed Will Green or where he could be found. Detectives noted that they had searched the same area weeks ago and found nothing resembling Mary Phagan’s pay envelope.

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One of the most common claims about the Leo Frank case is that Frank did not receive a fair trial. A quick look at these months leading up to trial reveals little to support that assertion.

Frank not only had competent defense counsel—he was represented by two of Georgia’s finest criminal defense lawyers. Rosser was a master of cross-examination and would display his talent to its fullest during the trial. Arnold was a renowned criminal attorney who worked tirelessly to fight against the state’s case and against mob anger and antisemitism. By the standards of 1913 Georgia, Frank could scarcely have assembled a better defense team.

Dorsey was certainly a dedicated and tenacious prosecutor. But that does not make the trial unfair. A fair trial gives both the prosecution and the defense an opportunity to present their cases. The jury, not the prosecutor, determines guilt or innocence. The prosecutor’s job is to present the strongest lawful case for the defendant’s guilt. Creating fake evidence is forbidden; presenting evidence in the most incriminating light is expected. Dorsey fought hard to prove Leo Frank’s guilt because that was what he was supposed to do.

Both defense counsel and prosecutors are expected to uphold all applicable laws and procedural rules. Both Frank’s defense attorneys and prosecutors acted within the generally accepted standards and guidelines of the period. Each faced pushback from the other side when they overreached. Both sides engaged in behavior that would not be tolerated in a 2026 court. But they were not arguing in a 2026 court. Judging behavior and conduct at a 1913 trial solely by twenty-first century standards is anachronistic.

A trial does not become “unfair” when it does not reach your preferred verdict. Neither does a trial’s fairness or unfairness guarantee the jury will arrive at a correct conclusion. You may think that the police and the jury arrived at an erroneous verdict. Juries and police regularly make mistakes. But there is a difference between a mistaken verdict and a willful, knowing attempt to frame an innocent man.

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^[1] “Mary Phagan’s Murder Was The Work of a Negro, Declares Leo M. Frank,” Atlanta Constitution, May 31, 1913. 1.

^[2] “Sensational Affidavit Made by Minola McKnight, Negro Cook at Home of L. M. Frank,” Atlanta Journal, June 4, 1913. 1.

^[3] “Negro’s Affidavit Not Given Much Credence,” Atlanta Journal, June 5, 1913. 2.

^[4] “‘I Know My Husband is Innocent,’ Asserts Wife of Leo M. Frank,” Atlanta Georgian, June 5, 1913. 1.

^[5] “Dorsey Replies to Charges of Mrs. L. Frank,” Atlanta Constitution, June 6, 1913. 1-2.

^[6] “Mrs. Leo Frank Attacks Solicitor Hugh M. Dorsey in a New Statement,” Atlanta Georgian, June 7, 1913. 1.

^[7] “I Am Seeking Only To Do My Duty For Truth And Justice,” Atlanta Georgian, July 14, 2026. 1.

^[8] “School Teacher Tells Remarkable Story to the Georgian,” Atlanta Georgian, July 14, 1913. 4.

Was Leo Frank guilty?

Absolutely. A jury of his peers found him guilty of the murder of Mary Phagan on August 25, 1913. On February 17, 1914, the Georgia Supreme Court denied his request for a new trial. An extraordinary motion before the Supreme Court to raise facts not available at the original trial was denied on November 14, 1914. On April 19, 1915, the United States Supreme Court denied his appeal in Frank v Mangum. By all standards of jurisprudence then and now Leo Frank was convicted of his crime, and that decision was upheld in multiple courts.

But that’s not the definition of “guilty” you had in mind. You were asking whether Leo Frank killed Mary Phagan. We’re all aware that courts sometimes get things wrong. It’s entirely possible for an honest jury, after a completely fair trial, to come up with a reasonable but completely wrong verdict. Innocent people are convicted regularly of crimes they did not commit. Guilty people regularly walk free on procedural errors, unreliable witnesses, or lies.

The conviction should be taken into account. It was reached by a jury after a lengthy trial and upheld repeatedly on appeal. But it is not irrefutable proof that Frank was either a martyr or a murderer.

Many have already made up their minds on that question. Wikipedia opens its Leo Frank entry with:

But there is no such unanimity among modern researchers. Many researchers have asked hard questions about the dominant Leo Frank narrative. Mary Phagan-Kean, great-niece of Mary Phagan, has written about the Frank case and discussed its impact on her family in her book The Murder of Little Mary Phagan. Other Frank skeptics have compiled the court documents and pointed to evidence that suggests those proceedings arrived at the right conclusion.

Quite a few Frank experts dismiss Frank skeptics as antisemites who see the Leo Frank case as a convenient club for Jew-bashing. In fairness, many of the loudest skeptics are indeed proud antisemites who see Frank as yet another example of Jewish perfidy. But it is equally true that one of the loudest defenders of Leo Frank’s legacy, the Anti-Defamation League, was founded in the wake of Frank’s arrest and that Leo Frank is at the heart of its founding myth.

So who’s right?

Short answer: it’s a long story.

Leo Frank isn’t just an integral part of the ADL’s origin story. He has become an important part of American mythology. To many Americans, he is an innocent victim of antisemitism and Southern bigotry. To others, he is proof that Jews will stop at nothing to save one of their own from just punishment. Yet all these competing narratives simplify a very complicated reality—one that is not so easily reduced to heroes and villains.

Like every mythic figure, Leo Frank’s story happens in a particular place (Atlanta, Georgia) and a particular time (1913-1915). The Atlanta of today looks very little like Leo Frank’s Atlanta though it has preserved many of the contemporaneous buildings—including the Temple, the synagogue where Rabbi David Marx officiated and Leo Frank and Lucille Selig were married.

The judicial system of today has changed even more dramatically. Police have access to technology that 1913 detectives could not imagine. If Mary Phagan were murdered in 2026, police would rely on DNA analysis, surveillance cameras, digital records, fingerprint records, and other forensic methods to determine when, where, and how she was murdered. Those resources were not available to Atlanta detectives examining the Phagan killing.

In 2026 Leo Frank’s reluctance to answer questions without a lawyer present would be expected. In 1913 it was seen by many as evidence Frank was trying to hide something. The defense’s racial appeals and the prosecution’s allegations of sexual depravity would be sharply limited or excluded altogether under modern rules of evidence. Many of the objections raised by Frank defenders and Frank skeptics would never have arisen in a modern courtroom. Yet even today judges and juries sometimes arrive at the wrong conclusion.

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My purpose is not to judge a 1913 trial by 2026 standards. At best, this would be a thought exercise that told us very little about why twelve 1913 jurors arrived at their conclusions. We cannot say conclusively that Leo Frank murdered Mary Phagan, nor can we say conclusively that he did not. But we can say with certainty that a 1913 jury, based largely on the testimony of a black laborer with a criminal record and a history of lying about the case, decided that he did.

Jim Conley’s role in convicting Leo Frank is one of the most glaring anomalies in the case. In Jim Crow South, the word of a black man carried far less weight than a white man’s word. Frank was a prosperous factory manager with a college degree and a spotless criminal record. Conley was a notorious black drunk with a long history of petty crime. One would expect prosecutors and jurors to reject out of hand the testimony of a Negro criminal against a respectable (albeit Jewish) white man.

And yet they did not.

For some, the answer is simple: Leo Frank was convicted by Southern Jew-haters who despised his dual status as a Jew and a Yankee, and who were inclined to believe the worst about him simply because of his ethnicity and religion. Any questions about that narrative are simply efforts to justify an unjust trial and a lynching.

Others offer a different but equally simple answer: Leo Frank was so clearly guilty that even Jim Crow Atlanta found the black eyewitness more trustworthy than the obvious rapist and murderer. Any questions about their narrative come from Jews who are still trying to blame an innocent black man for a fellow Jew’s heinous crime.

Both these answers are easy to digest. If you buy into their preconceptions, they feel like a complete, reasonable explanation of the event. There’s no need to take any contradictory evidence into account, no need to challenge your own preconceptions, no need to worry about inconvenient facts or counterarguments.

If you are beholden to either of these easy explanations, you will likely find this book frustrating. I have no interest in catering to preconceptions. Leo Frank has become a myth. I want to look at what scraps of reality I can find and see how the facts on the ground match up to the stories. Many modern readers come to the Frank case with a certainty that is strikingly absent from the often-conflicting primary sources.

There are two primary suspects in the Mary Phagan killing: Jim Conley and Leo Frank. Other suspects were held for a greater or lesser time, but they were freed when it became clear they were not involved in the murder. If an unknown third person murdered Phagan unbeknownst to Conley and Frank, why would they become entangled in concealing the crime?

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Jim Conley testified to moving Mary Phagan’s body. He also admitted to writing the notes that were found near Phagan’s body, though he claimed Frank dictated them. Conley was, at best, an accessory after the fact and served a year on the chain gang for that crime. In today’s dominant narrative, he is the man who murdered Phagan and pinned the crime on Leo Frank.

Leo Frank admitted that he gave Mary Phagan her pay shortly before she was killed. It is difficult to imagine how he could not have heard Phagan’s murder in the nearby metal room, or how he did not notice Jim Conley moving the body through the factory. More difficult still is the idea that Frank helped Conley conceal the crime until he himself became a prime suspect.

You can make a plausible case for each man’s guilt. You can also make a plausible case for each man’s innocence. Each explanation raises as many questions as it answers. That was the dilemma facing Frank’s jurors. Ultimately, they decided Frank was more likely to be the killer than Conley. Today that narrative has shifted. We speak of their guilt or innocence with an easy certainty, while the jurors who held Frank’s life in their hands reached their verdict in fear and trembling.

History rarely gives us certainty. Instead, it provides a series of competing explanations. It is up to the historian, or the reader, to decide which explanation best accounts for the evidence. We do not come to those explanations with blank slates. We view the past, like the present, through our prejudices and preconceptions. They help determine what we look for and what we see when we find it.

Leo Frank plays many roles in the American myth. He is a hard-working young Jewish martyr who represents American antisemitism. He is a lecherous Jewish villain who represents all the crimes of his race. He is a bigot who tried to frame two black men for his misdeeds. He is everything but a smart, awkward, hard-working factory manager who may or may not have committed a terrible crime. Myths are simultaneously larger than and smaller than life.

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^[1] “Leo Frank”, Wikipedia (June 30, 2026). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Frank

As the motorcade rolls past cheering crowds, Nellie Connally can’t help but feel a mixture of pride and relief. Several people advised the president against traveling to Dallas. Hostile crowds spat on Adlai Stevenson, Kennedy’s ambassador to the UN, during his visit last month. The Civil Rights movement has made Texas politics especially volatile and Dallas is notorious for its fierce conservatism. But Governor Connally’s wife has been pleasantly surprised by the warm welcome they have received so far.

“Mr. President,” Nellie says to Kennedy, “they can’t make you believe now that there are not some in Dallas who love you and appreciate you, can they?”

The president grins as the motorcade continues through downtown Dallas.

“No. They sure can’t.”

At first the crowd believes a motorcycle has backfired or somebody has thrown a firecracker. Then comes a second shot. Kennedy grabs for his throat and slumps. Governor Connally spins in his seat, his shirt blossoming red.

The third shot tears through the president’s skull. Abraham Zapruder flinches behind his movie camera as Kennedy’s head explodes. Jackie Kennedy screams.

“I have his brains in my hand.”

CBS viewers are watching As The World Turns when Walter Cronkite interrupts the broadcast.

Cronkite reaches out for another bulletin.

The screen returns briefly to the soap opera. The actors, working live, have been performing this whole time. They have no idea that their broadcast was interrupted or that their president has been shot. Within a few minutes all three networks will be focused on the shooting. At 2:38 p.m. EST Walter Cronkite struggles to maintain his composure as he announces:

At first, many police officers and civilians came from behind a picket fence atop a grassy knoll in Dealey Plaza. One witness reported seeing a “colored man” leaning out the sixth floor window of the Texas School Book Depository. Another witness reported that the shooter was a white man wearing khaki clothing.

About 30 minutes later, police officer J.D. Tippit spotted a suspicious man walking through Oak Cliff, a nearby residential area. He called the man to his patrol car. When Tippit left the vehicle, the man fired three shots into the chest, then a fourth in his temple. Around that time Roy Truly, a supervisor at the Depository, realized that one of his workers, Lee Harvey Oswald, was absent.

At 1:36 p.m., police were called concerning a man who had snuck into a Texas Theatre showing of War is Hell without paying. Oswald pulled a loaded gun when police arrived but was arrested after a brief struggle. When interrogated, Oswald insisted he was being made a “patsy” because he had lived in the Soviet Union.

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At 6:10 p.m., after landing in Washington with Kennedy’s body, Johnson made his first public statement as president.

That evening, doctors at Bethesda Naval Hospital performed an autopsy. The death certificate listed the cause of death as a gunshot wound to the skull. Conducted under difficult circumstances and extraordinary time pressure, the autopsy report lacked critical details about the bullet entry and exit wounds. These oversights would later prove a wellspring for many of the JFK conspiracy theories that followed.

While the nation mourned, many security officials worried. A year earlier, the Cuban Missile Crisis had brought the world to the brink of a global thermonuclear war. Now the president had been shot by a Soviet defector who had returned to the US with his Soviet-born wife. If this assassination was part of a Soviet plot—or if enough Americans believed it was—the consequences could be catastrophic.

At 11:21 a.m. CST on Sunday, November 24, Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald once in the abdomen at close range while police were transferring him from the city jail to the county jail. Less than two hours later, Oswald died at Parkland Memorial Hospital—the same hospital where Kennedy had been pronounced dead two days earlier.

The crowd outside Dallas police headquarters cheered when Oswald was shot. As the euphoria faded, many Americans realized that now Kennedy’s accused assassin would never testify in court. We would never learn whether he had accomplices or what foreign powers, if any, might have been involved. Some wondered if Oswald had been killed to prevent a catastrophic international confrontation. Others wondered if he had been killed to cover one up.

Five days after Oswald’s death, Johnson announced that a committee headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren would investigate the JFK assassination. The Warren Commission was created thanks in part to the work of Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, who argued “The public must be satisfied that Oswald was the assassin; that he did not have confederates who are still at large.”

But while Katzenbach hoped the report would put conspiracy theories to rest, the 888-page Warren Commission Report released on September 24, 1964 failed to do so. For many Americans, it raised more questions than it answered.

The Warren Commission concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone; that Jack Ruby had killed Oswald without assistance from the Dallas Police Department or any other conspirators; that no foreign government or federal, state, or local official were part of any conspiracy to aid and abet Oswald or Ruby. They also stated that the bullet which went into Kennedy’s upper back and through his throat went on to hit Governor Connally, a claim that would be dismissed by critics as the “magic bullet theory.”

A few months before the Warren Commission Report, Thomas G. Buchanan released Who Killed Kennedy? Blackballed in US journalism because of a youthful dalliance with Communism, Buchanan moved to France in 1961, where he worked as a freelance journalist. L’Express was so impressed by his analysis of inconsistencies in the official JFK assassination reports that it sent him to Dallas to cover the Ruby trial. During his homecoming visit, he met with Katzenbach and with another Warren Commission staff member.

In his L’Express articles, Buchanan argued that Jack Ruby knew Oswald and had loaned him money to repay the repatriation loan he incurred after returning from the Soviet Union. He further argued that the assassination had been financed by a right-wing Texas oilman, carried out by two gunmen, and that Oswald knew of the conspiracy but was not one of the shooters.

While Who Killed Kennedy? was popular in Europe among left-leaning intellectuals, it attracted relatively little attention in the United States. But it found a small but devoted readership among early critics of the Warren Report. These new scholars were passionately interested in the assassination and convinced that Kennedy’s death was caused not by a lone gunman but by a political conspiracy.

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The day after Kennedy’s assassination, Life publisher C.D. Jackson offered Abraham Zapruder $150,000 for all print and motion-picture rights to his 8mm silent film. His intention was not to make the film public immediately, but to protect Jacqueline Kennedy’s privacy. The film showed the president’s head exploding and his widow grasping desperately for pieces of his skull. Jackson wanted to keep the film under wraps because he felt these images were not suitable for public consumption. Few in 1963 would have disagreed with his decision.

Later critics would attribute less savory motives to Jackson’s decision. While he released individual frames to various publications, Frame 313—the image showing the fatal bullet strike Kennedy’s head—remained unavailable. Later some Warren Commission skeptics argued that Kennedy’s head jerks backward as he is hit. This, they claimed, proved that JFK was shot from the front by a second shooter who was not in the Depository.

But skeptics were not the only people who looked askance at Time Inc.’s ownership. On June 28, 1967, Walter Cronkite criticized Time, Inc. at the end of a four-part series on the Warren Commission report:

While Cronkite was chastising Time Inc., New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison was continuing his own investigation into the Kennedy assassination. Questions that had hitherto been asked by journalists, writers, and independent researchers were now being pursued by a prominent prosecutor. On March 1, 1967 he charged Clay Shaw with conspiring to assassinate John F. Kennedy with the help of Lee Harvey Oswald, David Ferrie, Guy Banister, and several other co-conspirators.

Five days after Garrison’s investigation made the papers, Ferrie was found dead in his home. The coroner said he had died of a brain aneurysm. Garrison declared Ferrie’s death was suicide but refused to rule out murder. Garrison’s aide, Lou Ivon, claimed that Ferrie called him after the story broke and said “You know what this news story does to me, don’t you? I’m a dead man.”^[5]

Banister, a former FBI agent, had ties to anti-Communist Cuban forces and allegedly supplied weapons to the soldiers of the disastrous 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion. On the afternoon of the Kennedy assassination, Banister pistol-whipped one of his employees, Jack Martin, after an argument. In December 1977, Martin told the House Select Committee on Assassinations that Banister attacked him after he said “What are you going to do—kill me like you all did Kennedy?”^[6]

Clay Shaw’s trial began on February 6, 1969. On March 1, the jury retired. Less than an hour later, they returned with a not guilty verdict. James Kirkwood, a personal friend of Shaw, reported that jury foreman Sidney Hebert told him: “I didn’t think too much of the Warren Report either until the trial. Now I think a lot more of it than I did before.”^[7] Garrison stated in his book On the Trail of Assassins:

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On April 14, 1865, Abraham Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth, a Confederate sympathizer. On July 2, 1881, James Garfield was shot by Charles Guiteau, a madman. On September 6, 1901, William McKinley was shot by Leon Czolgosz, an anarchist. Those assassinations shocked and horrified the nation, but those killers could be understood.

With Lee Harvey Oswald’s death, his motivations became an eternal mystery. He would never tell us what drove him to Dealey Plaza and who else, if anyone, was involved. The Warren Commission Report hoped to soothe that nagging unease by declaring Oswald the sole actor and the lone gunman. Many Americans welcomed that relief and accepted the conclusions. We were a more trusting society then. We might be skeptical about individual politicians, but we still found it hard to imagine that our government would lie about a presidential assassination.

Jim Garrison could not convince a jury that JFK was killed by conspirators. After Vietnam, the Pentagon Papers, and the Watergate scandal we found it easier to believe that Kennedy was killed by shadowy forces who were later protected by the government that he once led. In 1976 and 2001, Gallup polls found that 81 percent of Americans believed Oswald did not act alone. In 2023 those numbers had dropped to 65 percent.^[9] Six decades after its release, a majority of Americans still do not accept the conclusions of the Warren Commission Report.

After Kennedy’s death, his brief reign came to be looked upon as a golden age. People named his time in office after one of Kennedy’s favorite Broadway musicals. They called it Camelot. His assassination marked the beginning of our long journey toward a world that had difficulty imagining golden ages. Camelot died with Kennedy. Westeros arose out of the ashes.

[1] Vincent Bugliosi, Four Days in November. New York: W.W. Norton, 2007. E-book.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Lyndon B. Johnson, “Remarks Upon Arrival at Andrews Air Force Base” (November 22, 1963) at The American Presidency Project. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-upon-arrival-andrews-air-force-base-0.

[4] “Transcript of CBS News Inquiry: ‘The Warren Report’: Part IV” (PDF). Harold Weisberg Archive. June 28, 1967. p. 12. http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20Files/C%20Disk/CBS-TV%20News%20Special%20Part%204/Item%2001.pdf.

[5] Jim Garrison. On the Trail of the Assassins. New York: Sheridan Square Press. p. 138.

[6] House Select Committee Assassination Report, Volume X Sect. XII. 544 Camp Street and Related Events. (December 1977). 130.

[7] James Kirkwood. American Grotesque: An Account of the Clay Shaw-Jim Garrison-Kennedy Assassination Trial in New Orleans. New York: Harper, 1992. 511.

[8] Garrison, xii.

[9] Megan Brenan, “Decades Later, Most Americans Doubt Lone Gunman Killed JFK.” (2003). Gallup, https://news.gallup.com/poll/514310/decades-later-americans-doubt-lone-gunman-killed-jfk.aspx.

Those stains on his shirt were not blood, Jim Conley insisted. He was simply trying to wash out rust marks. The day watchman was mistaken when he said they were blood. And yes, he had dropped the shirt, but that was because he was startled. He had no intention to hide anything. He just needed a clean shirt to wear to the coroner’s inquest.

The Atlanta Police Department already knew Jim Conley. He had spent a few stays on the chain gang during his 27 years. Three months earlier, he had fired a shot at his former girlfriend, Lorena Jones and had a long history of drunk and disorderly arrests. The police booked Conley into jail on May 1, expecting to release him as soon as they determined the true nature of those stains. Conley claimed he could not write, so the investigators assumed he could not have written the notes found by Mary Phagan’s body.

On May 5, Leo Frank sat before the coroner’s inquest. While Atlanta detectives had described Frank as jumpy and nervous during their first encounters, he remained calm and collected throughout his deposition. In passing he noted that during the 55-minute span between the time Mary Phagan left his office and he went to lunch he had been visited by Lemmie Quinn, a plant foreman. Detectives checked the claim. Quinn confirmed Frank’s story; he had indeed spoken with the superintendent during that interval. Even the Georgian, chastened after the controversy of its April 30 headline, admitted that Frank’s testimony was “considered distinctly favorable.”

Earlier that morning, gravediggers had disinterred Mary Phagan’s body. Dr. Henry Fauntleroy Harris, one of Atlanta’s most prominent physicians, worked for hours on the body in an effort to establish the cause of Phagan’s death and the extent of her injuries. Dissatisfied with the original autopsy, Fulton County Solicitor General Hugh Dorsey ordered the body exhumed for a second examination. He would order a second exhumation on May 7 for further information.

Jim Conley was still in jail on May 15, when John Black and Harry Scott came to him for a statement. They had learned, despite his claims to the contrary, that he could read and write. (Frank had told a Pinkerton detective, “I know he can write. I have received many notes from him asking me to loan him money.”^[1])

The police were now inclined to believe that Newt Lee was not involved with Mary Phagan’s murder. They were keeping him in custody largely for his own safety. Many Atlantans—and quite a few Atlanta investigators—were certain that the Phagan murder was the sort of savagery that could only be a “Negro crime.” It was highly probable that releasing Newt would leave him hanging from a tree soon thereafter.

Those investigators now knew that Conley had lied during his first interview. After examining a sample of his handwriting, they realized he had written the notes found beside Mary Phagan’s body. They still had not gotten around to testing the stains on his shirt, but he had now become one of the investigation’s prime suspects.

When Detectives Black and Scott showed Conley a jeweler’s watch installment contract bearing his signature, he admitted, “White folks, I’m a liar.”^[2] He denied writing the notes at first, but after some time in solitary confinement he admitted on May 24 that he had indeed written them—but claimed he had done so at Leo Frank’s request.

On May 23 a grand jury had convened to decide whether Leo Frank should be charged with murder. The following day the grand jury met to deliberate. Five minutes later, they returned an indictment charging Frank with the murder of Mary Phagan.

The Atlanta Journal announced, “State Didn’t Show its Case to Secure Indictment Against Superintendent Leo M. Frank” and proclaimed:

This is one of the more interesting and controversial anomalies in the Frank case. The notes pointed suspicion toward Newt Lee, something that would benefit the real killer. But why would Leo Frank choose to leave notes?

The obvious answer is that he panicked and made a rash decision. Many people do foolish things under extreme stress, and few things are more stressful than murder. But if Conley were the murderer, he would also have reason to frame Newt. Did he write the notes in the hope of avoiding execution, then shift the blame to Leo Frank after detectives caught him in a lie?

For Frank’s supporters, the answer is obvious: Conley falsely accused Frank to save his own skin. The purported motivation is certainly understandable. Nobody doubts that the notes were in Jim Conley’s handwriting. But that raises another question. How did a black laborer with a long history of petty crime, a man who admitted lying and who was directly connected to some of the case’s most important evidence, convince detectives, prosecutors, jury members, and judges that his final account was believable?

Frank’s supporters would respond with another obvious answer: endemic anti-Semitism and class resentment led the jury to convict an innocent Jew. There were certainly anti-Semites to be found in 1913 Atlanta, and there was no shortage of class resentment. But there was also a long-standing, deep-rooted horror of black men raping white women. Dorsey’s autopsies had revealed evidence that Mary Phagan was subjected to a brutal sexual assault before death—something that had been rumored beforehand and which had already raised racial tensions to a fever pitch.

At this point in the investigation, Frank and Conley were the two most likely suspects. Frank had already hired a prominent attorney, and his family could afford to spend a great deal of money on more lawyers. Conley was a half-step above indigent. Throwing him to the wolves would give Atlanta the satisfaction that the brute black beast had been punished for his crimes against white womanhood. It would also be a far easier conviction. Yet investigators concluded that Conley was more valuable as a witness than as a defendant.

Antisemitism in Georgia was real. Jews were not allowed into many of the most exclusive clubs, and preachers regularly accused the Jewish people of denying or even killing Jesus. Jewish peddlers were often targeted for robbery and occasionally run out of town by local merchants. There were bad feelings about carpetbaggers in general and Jewish carpetbaggers in particular. But the idea that these feelings would so inflame a jury that they would accept Conley over Frank is hard to reconcile with the racial tensions of the day.

That said, I might offer an alternative explanation to why Atlantans found Jim Conley more credible than Leo Frank.

Conley lied multiple times. Most white Atlantans in 1913 would expect that from a poor black laborer in jail. In their estimation lying came as naturally to shiftless no-account negroes as fighting, drinking moonshine, and playing craps. They would have a harder time imagining that Conley had hatched an elaborate scheme to frame his wealthy employer than accepting that he was telling the truth about a man who was already under suspicion.

Leo Frank was Jewish, but most 1913 Atlantans would hold him to the same standards they expected from any prosperous white man of his social position. An innocent man should have no fear of cooperating with investigators. He should fight to clear his name rather than calling in lawyers before he was even charged with a crime. Leo Frank was behaving like a man who was trying to hide something. Antisemitism might well have played less of a role than his failure to measure up to Georgia social expectations.

These preconceptions are unfair, outdated and offensive to modern sensitivities. But this crime happened over a century ago. We cannot understand what happened unless we are willing to acknowledge how contemporary expectations influenced the participants. We may find these ideas distasteful. Georgians in 1913 regarded them as common sense, just as people in every era find their assumptions self-evident.

Not everybody trusted Conley. On May 27 the Georgian front page declared CONLEY NEW PHAGAN SUSPECT and stated:

Shaken by the headline, Conley made a second affidavit in which he claimed:

Earlier Conley said that he had written the notes the day before Phagan’s murder, suggesting that Frank had planned to kill her all along. Now his story changed. In this new telling, Mary Phagan’s killing was an accident. Frank had panicked, offered Conley money to help him move her body, and wrote the notes to throw suspicion on Newt Lee.

On Friday, May 30, Jim Conley and a group of people including Chief Beavers walked through the National Pencil Company after ordering workers to leave the premises. Conley walked to the metal room and lay down where he had found Phagan’s body; she was lying on her stomach with a cord around her neck. He described helping Frank carry the body to the basement and insisted that this third affidavit was voluntary; that he had not been browbeaten are mistreated; and that he was telling the whole truth because “Mr. Frank and his friends have forsaken me.”^[6]

Conley was now a celebrity; gawkers and reporters gathered round him to ask questions that he was happy to answer. His recently hired lawyer, William Smith, was less than amused. He had told Conley in no uncertain terms to keep quiet—the same advice Frank’s lawyers had given him. But while Frank complied, Conley basked in his newfound notoriety. With the assistance of Dorsey and Atlanta Chief of Detectives Newport Lanford, Smith had Conley transferred to lockup with access restricted to approved visitors.

^[1] Leonard Dinnerstein, The Leo Frank Case. Athens and London: University of Georgia Press, 2008. 22.

^[2] Oney, 130.

^[3] “State Didn’t Show its Case to Secure Indictment Against Superintendent Leo M. Frank,” Atlanta Journal, May 24, 1913. https://www.leofrank.org/state-didnt-show-its-case-to-secure-indictment-against-superintendent-leo-m-frank/.

^[4] “Conley New Phagan Suspect,” Atlanta Georgian, May 27, 1913. https://www.leofrank.org/suspicion-turned-to-conley-accused-by-factory-foreman/.

^[5] “Negro Conley’s Affidavit Lays Bare Slaying,” Atlanta Georgian, May 29, 1913. https://www.leofrank.org/negro-conleys-affidavit-lays-bare-slaying/.

^[6] “Conley, Taken to Factory, Shows Where Girl Was Found—How They Put Body in Basement,” Atlanta Journal, May 30, 1913. https://www.leofrank.org/conley-taken-to-factory-shows-where-girl-was-found-how-they-put-body-in-basement/.

On April 29, 1913, Rabbi David Marx learned that one of his congregants had been arrested for murder. We do not know how he reacted to this news: Rabbi Marx was a man of action, not introspection. He spoke little about his emotions and wrote even less. We can reconstruct the world in which David Marx lived. We can document what he said and what he did. His feelings remain hidden from us.

Newt Lee, the night watchman who discovered Mary Phagan’s body on the 26^th, had been jailed on suspicion of murder soon after the police arrived. Two notes were found by the body which made him an immediate suspect:

Certainly, no one would mistake the small, slight Leo Frank for a “long tall black negro.” Newt Lee fit that description. Detectives reported that Frank seemed nervous and jumpy when they visited him at home on April 27^th, even before they mentioned the murder. But any respectable citizen visited by police on a Sunday morning before 6 o’clock would feel the same way.

The detectives expressed suspicions at Frank’s long-winded answers. But Frank’s tendency for extraneous details was documented years earlier in the 1906 Cornell College Book, which stated:

Rabbi Marx had spent years building relationships with Christian leaders and Georgia government officials. He sat in the Amen Corner alongside evangelicals when famous preacher Billy Sunday came to town. His career had been dedicated to strengthening the place of Atlanta’s Jews within the civic life of the city. Now one of his congregants stood accused of a horrible crime. Marx had every reason to give Frank the benefit of the doubt. He also had every reason to worry about how this arrest might harm his decades of interfaith work.

A few hours after the police concluded their interrogation of Frank, they picked up a former train conductor named Arthur Mullinax. An eyewitness claimed he had seen Mullinax with a tired, angry Mary Phagan sometime after midnight on the 26^th. While the police were booking Mullinax, Frank was paying his respects to Mary Phagan at Bloomfield’s Rest Home.

On Monday, the 28^th, a National Pencil Company employee discovered a suspicious red stain on the floor of the Metal room on the second floor. Chief James Litchfield Beavers personally tested the stain and determined that it was dried blood. Police now believed that Mary Phagan had died on the second floor of the factory, only a short distance from Leo Frank’s office.

This discovery transformed the investigation. By his own testimony, Frank was the only other person in the office. How did he not hear the commotion? Who else could have been in the factory? If he had stepped away from his desk, where was he when the crime took place? Earlier, investigators wondered about his odd behavior. Now they were looking at Frank as a suspect.

Then yet another suspect entered the picture: a bookkeeper named James Milton Gantt. Gantt had been fired earlier after the cash box came up $2 short. He had arrived at the factory on Saturday the 26^th at around 6 p.m. to claim two pairs of shoes. When police picked him up on Monday, he was carrying a suitcase packed for a long trip. His alibi—that he had been home in bed on Saturday by 10 p.m.—was refuted by his sister, who hadn’t seen him in over a month.

But the suspect list soon grew narrower. The witness who claimed he had seen Mullinax and Phagan together had just been discharged from the Navy for nearsightedness. Gantt’s sister had lied to officers for reasons which remain unclear; he was indeed at home at the time he stated. Mullinax and Gantt were released and investigators called on Frank yet again. But this time he had retained one of Atlanta’s most prominent lawyers, Luther Rosser.

Today this would hardly raise an eyebrow. After the Supreme Court’s decision in Miranda v. Arizona (1966), Americans are well aware they have the right to remain silent and to have an attorney present during questioning. In 1913, Frank’s decision was highly unusual. Most Americans at that time felt that an innocent man had nothing to fear from speaking openly with the police. Why did Leo Frank want a lawyer present before he had been charged with a crime?

Frank had also called on the Pinkerton Detective Agency concerning the case. He told Pinkerton detectives that Gantt knew Mary Phagan well. But Harry Scott, the detective assigned to his case, had read the police files and was a good friend to one of the Atlanta investigators. He wondered why Frank told police that he didn’t know Mary Phagan by name yet told him that his bookkeeper knew her well.

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Scott’s friend on the force, John Black, let himself into Newt Lee’s residence on the morning of the 29^th, not long after Mullinax and Gantt were released. He discovered a bloody linen shirt in the house. But upon a closer examination, he realized the blood stains were on the inside of the shirt. Black concluded that the shirt had been planted there to implicate Lee.

Black also recalled that when Frank examined Newt Lee’s time card on Sunday, he told detectives it was “in order.” The next day he changed his story and gave detectives a time card with missing punches. An April 30, 1913 article in the Atlanta Constitution notes an unnamed source saying:

Black dropped the shirt off at police headquarters before visiting the National Pencil Company again. The bloodstains near his office had aroused suspicion. Several other suspects had been eliminated. Now someone was trying to frame Newt Lee for the murder with a bloody shirt and a forged time card. They had no other suspect with comparable access to Lee’s address and time card. With this information before them, Black and two other detectives arrested Leo Frank at his office on suspicion of murder.

On April 30 the Coroner’s Jury began its own investigation. One witness, Nellie Pettis, declared that Frank had made improper advances on her when she came to the factory to get her sister-in-law’s pay:

George Epps, a 15-year-old newsboy who rode the trolley with Mary Phagan on the day of her murder and who waited in vain for her at their prearranged meeting place, testified:

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These firsthand and secondhand allegations do not prove that Frank was a murderer. If they are true, they describe inappropriate behavior that today would be called sexual harassment. This conduct reflects poorly on Frank’s character and his treatment of female employees. But Frank’s behavior was hardly unique. Many female factory workers complained about lecherous bosses. We can acknowledge that this behavior is appalling while also noting that it does not by itself establish that Leo Frank murdered Mary Phagan.

But for working-class families who had endured this kind of behavior for many years, Frank became a symbol of everything wrong with industrial authority. He was a Yankee and a carpetbagger who came down South to seek his fortune. Like many wealthy Atlanta newcomers, he was Jewish. And like many of those newcomers, he had a reputation for making sexual advances toward young women who depended on him for their pay. To them, the only difference between Frank and other factory bosses was that he now sat in jail, accused of murdering one of those young women.

David Marx worked quietly behind the scenes throughout Frank’s trial. He used his many Georgia connections to organize support for his congregant. But he did not offer fiery speeches or denunciations. That silence is telling. So too is the marked decline in his interfaith work. Before 1913, Marx was one of Atlanta’s most active advocates for Jewish/Christian cooperation. He spoke regularly before Christian audiences, civic organizations and public gatherings. From 1913 to 1921, those efforts slowed to a trickle.

As throughout his career, Marx spoke most clearly during that time with his actions. He concentrated his efforts on the Temple and on his congregation and moved away from the public interfaith work that had defined his work for nearly two decades. We cannot say whether that pause was caused by the emotional toll of the Frank case, growing hostility toward Atlanta’s Jews, a personal crisis, or some combination of these things.

Marx left few clues other than what he did—and what he chose not to do. All we know is that he resumed his efforts in 1921 and continued until his retirement 25 years later.

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^[1] Cornell Senior Class Book. Ithaca: Cornell University, 1906. 79.

^[2] “Factory Clock Not Punched for Hours on Night of Murder,” Atlanta Constitution, April 30, 1913. https://www.leofrank.org/factory-clock-not-punched-for-hours-on-night-of-murder/.

^[3] “Coroner’s Inquest” at Leo Frank Case Archive. https://www.leofrank.org/trial-and-evidence/coroners-inquest/.

^[4] Steve Oney, And the Dead Shall Rise, New York: Pantheon Books, 2003. 73.

On the morning of April 20, 1999, seniors Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold walked into Columbine High School and murdered twelve students and one teacher before taking their own lives.

Columbine was not the first school massacre. On January 29, 1979, Brenda Spencer wounded eight children and killed two adults at the Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego because “I don’t like Mondays.” On May 18, 1927, Michigan farmer Andrew Kehoe used explosives to kill 45 people and injure 58 in the Bath School Disaster. On November 12, 1966, Robert Benjamin Smith, an admirer of mass murderers Charles Whitman and Richard Speck, killed four women and a toddler at the Rose-Mar College of Beauty.

These crimes horrified the nation, and most Americans were shocked and disgusted by Columbine. But alongside the rage and grief there was a small but persistent kernel of admiration. By 2015, Mother Jones identified 74 Columbine-inspired plots or attacks across thirty states, with 89 killed—including nine shooter suicides—and 126 wounded. Thirteen plotters hoped to surpass Columbine’s death toll. Ten cited the shooters as heroes, idols, martyrs, or God. Three made pilgrimages to Columbine while planning their attacks.^[1]

Columbine continues to attract the disaffected. On June 23, 2026, a few weeks after his high school graduation, 18-year-old Bradley Scott Sayer walked into a Chico, California library and fatally shot two people. He was wearing a T-shirt bearing the words “Natural Selection,” the same slogan Eric Harris wore during the killings. Butte County District Attorney Michael Ramsey noted that Sayer’s social media postings showed he “had been a fan, and a fan for a long time.”^[2]

Twenty-seven years later, people are still emulating Harris and Klebold.

The Columbine contagion has crossed borders. Artyam Kazantsev wore braided keychains with the words “Columbine,” “Dylan,” and “Eric” when he opened fire at a school in Izhevsk, Russia on September 26, 2022. Seventeen people, including eleven children, died.^[3] 27-year-old Julio César Jasso Ramírez was carrying an AI image of himself standing alongside Harris and Klebold as he opened fire on tourists at Mexico’s Teotihuacan pyramid on April 20, 2026 – the anniversary of the Columbine massacre.^[4]

How did two angry high school students create a template for mass murder that has endured for over a quarter century?

Many have guessed at what caused Columbine. Psychiatric drugs, bullying, video games, easy access to guns, the collapse of traditional values—lots of people are certain we can stop school shootings if only we fix one or two big problems. Their explanations are not without some merit, but they do not fully account for the tragedy or for the acolytes who continue to emulate Harris and Klebold.

Their urge to find explanations and solutions is understandable. We’re storytelling apes driven to impose order out of chaos. Few events seem more senseless than a school shooting. When they become regular occurrences, we’re driven to find out why for practical and existential reasons. We want a world we can comprehend, a flaw we can correct, a lesson we can learn—something that will bind the open wound left behind by an unimaginable act.

Instead of searching for answers and solutions, let’s look for anomalies.

Mass murder is nothing new. Neither are mass murders committed in schools. What is anomalous about Columbine is that it became a meme—not an internet joke, but a self-replicating cultural idea. There was no wave of school bombings after the Bath School Disaster. There were no shooters firing into playgrounds because the attacker didn’t like Mondays, not even after the Boomtown Rats turned Brenda Spencer’s slogan into a hit song. That is the first thing that sets Columbine apart.

We have an underground culture of serial killer devotees. Most content themselves with collecting trading cards, writing to inmates, and attending conventions. They rarely aspire to be the next Jack the Ripper or Richard Ramirez. Americans are likewise fascinated by assassins. We are still arguing about who killed the Kennedys and where Jimmy Hoffa is buried. But while wishing death on politicians has become a social media sport, very few set out to become the next Lee Harvey Oswald or John Wilkes Booth.

These figures inspire books, podcasts, and documentaries. They do not produce the culture of emulation that has grown up around Columbine. What is most important about Harris and Klebold’s admirers is not the size of their club. It is their eagerness to follow in the footsteps of their idols. Columbine speaks clearly to a very small but very angry audience. That is the second thing that sets Columbine apart.

Harris and Klebold offer angry, disaffected loners a shortcut to notoriety. Walk into a crowded area. Start shooting. Be remembered forever.

You probably—hopefully—read those sentences with horror. But for that small, angry audience, Columbine represents something very different. With one moment of indiscriminate violence, they can strike back at the world that they believe has rejected them. They can ensure that their names will be remembered long after their classmates, teachers, and perceived enemies have been forgotten. The world doesn’t remember Columbine’s 2000 prom queen, valedictorian, or most valuable football player. But it knows Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.

Harris and Klebold blazed a path that is easy to follow and promises international notoriety. In the Age of Influencers, attention is a commodity. It not only provides its adherents with the vicarious thrill of fictional antiheroes like Hannibal Lecter or Dexter Morgan. It gives them a chance to join the story themselves. We may consider their actions appalling, but the attention economy makes little distinction between admiration and infamy. To the algorithm, outrage is still engagement. That is the third thing that sets Columbine apart.

Columbine sparked national discussions about bullying because many of us spent our school years being bullied. The idea that two young men could be driven to a horrible crime after years of cruelty and abuse made sense to us. We did not support or excuse their actions, but we felt we understood them.

It’s no longer clear how extensively Harris and Klebold were bullied, or whether bullying played a key role in their decisions. But we often project our past experiences onto others. Many students who felt themselves trapped in a hostile environment looked at Columbine and felt they could understand Eric and Dylan. A few saw a script for striking back at the world that had made their lives miserable. They could sympathize with the school shooters and dream of revenge. A very few did more than dream. That is the fourth thing that sets Columbine apart.

In 1979, the Cleveland Elementary School shooting faded quickly from the headlines and television news. “I Don’t Like Mondays” only reached No. 73 on the Billboard Hot 100. By 1999 most Americans had access to 24-hour cable news. 41 percent of American adults were using the Internet. A December 1998 Pew Research study found 64 percent of Internet users went online at least once a week for news.^[5]

In this new media environment, Columbine dominated public discussion for weeks. It was discussed on newspapers, television, and internet forums. Usenet had a dedicated group, alt.current-events.massacre.columbine, as well as many Columbine discussions on alt.conspiracy. 206 Associated Press news and broadcast editors ranked Columbine the second-biggest story of 1999, behind the Clinton impeachment trial and ahead of the Kosovo war. That is the fifth thing that sets Columbine apart.

This kind of wanton school slaughter was once very rare. In 1927 Andrew Kehoe blew up a Michigan school. In 1966, nearly forty years later, Robert Benjamin Smith attacked the Rose-Mar College of Beauty. Thirteen years later, Brenda Spencer shot at an elementary school playground in 1979. Another twenty years elapsed before Columbine.

On April 28, 1999, after eight days of watching the Columbine massacre on the news, fourteen-year-old Todd Cameron Smith killed one student and wounded another at his former school in Taber, Alberta. A month after Columbine Anthony “T.J.” Solomon pledged allegiance to the Columbine attackers and injured six students with a .22 caliber rifle. On November 1, German student Martin Peyerl killed four students and injured seven before taking his own life.

Today Columbine-style school shootings have become recurring events despite increased school security, stricter anti-bullying rules, and increased awareness of teen mental health issues. Our efforts to staunch this bloodshed have so far borne little fruit. We are still shocked when schoolchildren are slaughtered. We are no longer surprised. That is the sixth thing that sets Columbine apart.

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So, what can we glean from these anomalies? Taken individually, not very much.

We know that school shootings and public spree killings have become far more common since Columbine. We know that the Internet has changed the way we get our news, and that it rewards outrage as readily as praise. We know that bullying is less tolerated today than it was twenty-seven years ago, thanks in large part to conversations sparked by Columbine. And we know that many disaffected young people empathize and even identify with Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold—and that each year we see Harris and Klebold name-dropped by multiple killers.

We have spent years trying to understand the Columbine shooting. But in our quest to determine what afflicted Patient Zero, we have paid less attention to how the contagion has spread. What other anomalies can we find that will help us better understand this memetic disease and, perhaps, find ways to contain it?

The answers we seek are unlikely to be found solely in debates over guns, school security, or antidepressants. Those questions matter, but they do not explain why Columbine became contagious. To understand how this mythology spread, we must first understand why its adherents came to see Harris and Klebold as demigods and murder as a ritual.

The Columbine admirers have not created an organized religion. There are no sacred texts, no temples, and no official clergy. But Harris and Klebold serve roles that are filled by the saints, martyrs, and culture heroes of many religions. Some adherents make pilgrimages to Columbine. Others adopt the killers’ symbols and iconography.

A few of the most devout perform acts of mass murder as a ritual re-enactment of the founding myth. By re-enacting the founding myth, they become part of the ongoing story and are joined with the founders in symbolic immortality. In death they become part of the myth. They become the Remembered and rise above the Forgotten. In seeking revenge, they win rebirth.

The mythology of Columbine is deeply pessimistic. Like many Gnostic sects, the Columbine mythos sees the world as a prison ruled by hostile forces—classmates, schools, parents, institutions, and the corrupt society they view with fear, loathing, and contempt.

Gnosticism and Monasticism were peaceful efforts to understand suffering and how to transcend it. Gnostics felt society was corrupt because it was rooted in the warped material creations of a Demiurge. The fourth century also saw the rise of the Circumcellions, a radical North African movement associated with the Donatists.

Christianity had recently become an accepted religion of the Roman Empire. The age of persecution was ending, but it left behind an uncomfortable question: what should become of bishops and priests who had surrendered scriptures, handed over Church property, or otherwise compromised with imperial authorities to save themselves?

The Donatists argued that such clergy had forever forfeited their spiritual authority. The Circumcellions went even further. They regarded the established Church as irredeemably corrupt, welcomed outcasts, and elevated martyrdom into the highest religious ideal.

Contemporary sources claim that many Circumcellions sought violent confrontations in the hopes of dying for their cause. Screaming “Laudate Deum!” (praise to God), they would attack random travelers and Roman legionaries with wooden clubs. If they prevailed, they took the spoils. If they lost, they won the martyr’s crown. Others would interrupt court proceedings to scream at the judges, knowing as they did so that contempt of court carried a death sentence under Roman law.

We know little about the Circumcellions, and what we know comes from uniformly hostile sources. But we see in those reports a pattern that has repeated itself throughout history. When a movement comes to see the existing world as beyond redemption, some of its believers will eventually conclude that the old moral rules no longer apply. Acts the greater society regard as atrocities can become sacred pathways to transcendence.

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^[1] Mark Follman and Becca Andrews, “How Columbine Spawned Dozens of Copycats.” Mother Jones, October 5, 2015. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/10/columbine-effect-mass-shootings-copycat-data/.

^[2] Louis Casiano, “Suspected California library gunman influenced by Columbine shooting and wore matching shirt, officials say.” Fox News, June 23, 2026. https://www.foxnews.com/us/suspected-california-library-gunman-influenced-columbine-shooting-wore-matching-shirt-officials-say.

^[3] Robyn Dixon, “At least 17 dead, many wounded, at school shooting in Russia.” Washington Post, September 26, 2022.

^[4] Maria Verza, “Gunman at Mexican pyramids carried materials related to 1999 Columbine massacre.” PBS, April 20, 2026. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/gunman-at-mexicos-teotihuacan-pyramids-kills-1-canadian-tourist-injures-6

^[5] Pew Research Center, “The Internet News Audience Goes Ordinary” (January 14, 1999) at Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/1999/01/14/the-internet-news-audience-goes-ordinary/.

If you were a union member, the Reagan years were not so good. One of Reagan’s first major actions was breaking the Air Traffic Controller’s Union strike in August 1981; his relations with organized labor were generally strained thereafter. If you relied on welfare, the decade brought cuts and retrenchment.

If you were seriously mentally ill, you likely found yourself out of the mental hospital and onto the sidewalk. Decades of deinstitutionalization culminated under Reagan in a system where many promised community-based programs never materialized, and countless people saw their status change from institutionalized to homeless.

For most other Americans, things were looking up. Stagflation was over. The Cold War was winding down, and it was becoming increasingly clear that capitalism had triumphed. Wall Street was booming and young urban professionals (yuppies for short) were reaping the spoils. After the humiliation of Vietnam, the disillusionment of Watergate, and the long years of malaise, it looked like America was back on top again.

Oliver Stone’s Wall Street was released on December 11, 1987. Several weeks earlier, America had witnessed the largest stock market decline in its history, a 22.6 percent drop on Black Monday. But even after October 19, many theatregoers saw Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) not as a cautionary tale but as a hero to be emulated.

Throughout most of the 20^th century, stocks were viewed primarily as long-term investments. Investors bought shares to collect dividends, build retirement savings, and participate in a company’s growth. The 1920s saw a speculative stock frenzy that swept the nation. It ended poorly. After the crash of 1929, most Americans treated stocks as assets to hold, not commodities to buy on margin and flip for profit.

Stock speculation and trading was largely limited to a small, exclusive class who could afford seats on the exchanges. Trading costs were steep, and real-time stock price information was mostly available to those who could afford a ticker tape machine. The average middle or working-class stockholder might hold some shares in his company and use the annual dividends as a part of his retirement plan. My grandmother-in-law was still collecting small dividends from Bell, where she once worked, when she died at 101.

By the 1980s, stock speculation had moved from the fringes of Wall Street to the center. The patient investor was giving way to the aggressive trader. Long-term growth and reliable dividends were dull next to the fortunes to be made on takeover rumors and inside information. Insider trading was and remains illegal, but when you’re talking about making millions before lunch, those laws were often bent, broken, or ignored. One arbitrageur explained his method for concealing insider trading profits.

Many of the most successful traders of the era saw the system as something to beat rather than follow. They thought themselves untouchable, and for years they were. But clever schemes, like bull markets, can only last for so long.

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In the 1980s, the online world was still in its infancy. But mainframes and trading algorithms were already transforming finance. These computers could buy and sell securities automatically, at transaction speeds no human broker could match. Some old-school traders worried that automated trading would amplify market swings, turning ordinary declines into stampedes. But for traders looking for a quick score, volatility was a feature rather than a bug.

There was always a great deal of chicanery, collusion, and backstabbing in the financial industry. But financiers also felt a sense of stewardship. They wanted to maintain generational ties to their clients and felt a duty to see that the markets continued to function They had reputations to uphold, and so they honored ethical standards in the breach if not always the observance.

These new traders asked, like E.B. White’s Templeton the rat, “What’s in it for me?” The old-guard distrusted upstarts like Ivan Boesky and feared his bare-knuckle style would draw unwanted attention from regulators. But the only reputation the upstarts cared about was their reputation for turning profits, and they assumed that any legal problem could be solved with enough money.

The 1980s also saw an explosion in new financial instruments. Bundling allowed investors to buy and sell illiquid assets like mortgages in tradable securities. “Junk” bonds offered a higher yield and helped finance many of the leveraged buyouts and hostile takeovers that characterized the decade. Futures contracts let investors hedge against overall market volatility and became a major tool in portfolio management. But many of the people buying them—and some of the people selling them—did not fully understand the risks involved.

In 1975 the SEC abolished fixed commissions. This led to a boom in discount brokerages that offered cheap, no-frills stock trades without investment advice. Their job was simply to take orders; investors were expected to make their own financial decisions. This opened the stock market to a new generation of aspiring stock millionaires. During the early years of the Reagan boom, many of them did surprisingly well.

During the Roaring Twenties, an aspiring stock tycoon could borrow up to 90 percent of a stock’s cost on margin; brokers and banks financed the rest. If the stock rose, the investor pocketed most of the gains. But if it fell sharply, the losses were magnified just as dramatically. A buyer who put down $1,000 to purchase $10,000 worth of stock could see his investment wiped out by a relatively modest decline. If the company collapsed, he could lose his entire stake and still owe thousands of dollars to his lender. Many discovered this painful reality during the 1929 crash.

After Black Tuesday and the Great Depression, regulators imposed stricter margin requirements. During the 1980s boom, margin investors had to put down at least 50 percent of a stock’s purchase price. That seemed an acceptable risk. Few stocks lose half their value in a single day. But leverage still magnifies both losses and gains. Large market declines could trigger margin calls, forced sales, and financial ruin. But after years of rising stock prices, few investors expected a serious downturn any time soon.

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On October 14, 1987, the House Ways and Means Committee introduced a bill to effectively eliminate the tax benefits associated with financing mergers and leveraged buyouts. Takeover target stocks had already fallen 5% since the first rumors arose on October 9. By the end of Black Monday, they will have dropped as much as 50%.

A few weeks earlier, Alan Greenspan talked the Federal Reserve board into raising a key interest rate by 0.5 percent. His intention was to cut off inflationary pressures at the pass, but many traders were relying on cheap credit to keep the money train flowing. And as they were grappling with this continuing bad news, they discovered that the August trade deficit had come in over $1 billion over expectations.

None of these developments were out of the ordinary, and there was no obvious reason why they triggered a crisis. But they posed a threat to cheap money, rising stock prices, and the lucrative mergers and acquisitions markets. By the end of the day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 95.46 points (3.81 percent); on Thursday it fell another 57.61 points (2.39 percent); on Friday the DJIA was down 108.35 points (4.6 percent).

Many stockholders had a very difficult weekend. While the stock market was tumbling on Friday Iranian missiles struck a U.S.-flagged oil tanker in the Persian Gulf. Amidst mounting uncertainty, one thing seemed sure: stocks would open lower on Monday morning. The only question was how bad the damage would be.

After a fall of over 10 percent, many analysts expected there would be some traders looking to pick up trustworthy stocks at fire sale prices. But those traders who bought the dip got burned as prices continued to drop. By the end of the day, the S&P 500 was down an additional 22.6 percent, the largest daily decline in NYSE history.

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Most people who enter “the pit”—the trading floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange—leave within three years after losing their entire investment. By 1987 Scott Serfling had been there for five years and had no intention of leaving. While other traders focus on commodities like wheat, cattle, or oil, Serfling specialized in S&P 500 stock futures.

These highly leveraged contracts allowed him to control enormous stock positions with relatively little money down. A correct guess could earn spectacular profits. A bad one could lead to equally spectacular losses.

Serfling was an exceptional trader. On Friday, October 16, during an exceptionally bad downturn, he took a calculated risk. Instead of closing out all his S&P 500 positions before going home—a cardinal rule of futures trading—he chose to keep $287,000 worth of contracts that he had secured for just over $20,000. He was holding those contracts when the market opened on Black Monday.

Many traders were trying to reduce their exposure amidst the bloodshed. Others were convinced that a rebound was inevitable. Serfling was in the latter camp. He purchased $650,000 worth of December contracts that morning, He sold them a few hours later at a $9,000 loss. His total losses for that day exceeded his father’s annual salary at any point during fifty-one years as a teacher and guidance counselor.

Powerful politicians, cabinet officials, and financial titans pulled together to staunch market losses and prevent the crash from spreading into the banking system and the broader economy. This was not a shadowy conspiracy castle to steal from the poor and give to the rich. It was days of bickering, backbiting, jockeying for position, and arguing among people who had just lost enormous sums of money themselves.

Yet, for all that, it worked reasonably well. Banks remained liquid enough to meet their obligations. The financial system survived. By 1989, the market had recovered its losses and returned to its pre-crash highs. But many investors at all levels never recovered from their Black Monday losses. Among them was Scott Serfling.

Tim Metz, a respected Wall Street journalist and editor, had profiled Serfling in his 1988 book on the crash, Black Monday. In November 1989 Metz spoke with Serfling about investing through his company, Serfling & Associates, Incorporated. On December 21, 1989, Metz withdrew $360,850 to an IRA and granted Serfling access to the account. He had no idea that Serfling’s registration with the National Futures Administration had earlier been revoked for misconduct.^[4]

Serfling used the money he gained from Metz and three other individuals not for investment purposes but for rent, a luxury car, children’s toys, a membership in a dating service, and payments of debts to previous investors. When he was finally caught in 1995, he was sentenced to 37 months in federal prison and ordered to pay $425,850.99 in restitution.

After his release from prison, Serfling worked as a car salesman at a Waukegan, Illinois Ford dealership. When plans to open a second dealership fell through in early 2002, Serfling and loan broker Mary Capri made an offer to purchase the property and lease it to Ford. To get a loan, Serfling and Capri provided a lease agreement with Ford Leasing Development Company showing that Ford would be leasing the Gurnee property for $125,000 a month.

Based on that agreement, appraiser Robert Schmidt valued the property at $15.7 million. Loan officer John Byers, relying on the appraisal, on tax returns from Serfling and Serfin Trust LLC, and on bank statements faxed to Byers showing Serfling had over $10 million in a personal account, agreed to an $11,750,000 loan.^[5]

After receiving partial payment, Serfling settled personal debts, paid overdue bills, and opened a line of credit at the Sun Coast Hotel and Casino. He did not use any of the proceeds to develop the Gurnee property or make the first loan payments. Further investigation revealed that his bank statements, tax returns, and leasing agreement were forgeries and that the phone number used to verify the Ford lease agreement belonged to Capri. In October 2005, a jury found Serfling guilty of three counts of wire fraud and mail fraud. A judge sentenced him to 78 months imprisonment.

During the Reagan years, the corporate raiders seemed unstoppable. The future lay in leveraged buyouts, mergers, acquisitions, and ruthless trading. Success was measured by your net worth and the size of your latest deal. Black Monday marked the beginning of the end for those cultural heroes. They remained wealthy and influential, but they had lost their aura of invincibility. The insider trading scandals that followed only accelerated their decline.

The 1990s belonged to the tech geek. Instead of tailored suits, these new cultural heroes favored khakis and T-shirts. They often seemed more comfortable around computers than people, but their eccentricity was part of their charm. They didn’t buy and sell companies, but they built them. And in an era where software seemed as safe a career path as finance once did, software entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates became the new Masters of the Universe.

Social media has brought us from the Age of Technology to the Age of Attention. Influencers, podcasters, streamers, and personal brands are the new celebrities. Success is measured not merely by wealth or intelligence, but by one’s audience share. Some tech entrepreneurs, notably Elon Musk, have adapted to this new world and become attention merchants. Others, like the corporate raiders before them, have retreated from the spotlight. A few, like Scott Serfling, continue to chase the dreams of an earlier age.

Serfling had multiple opportunities to build a respectable and prosperous life. He held a veterinary degree and originally planned to work with horses before going into finance. He was a successful automobile salesman. But even after America had moved on from celebrity corporate raiders to geeky bespectacled men who built computers in their garages, Scott Serfling remained fixated on the world he had lost. He spent years trying to win back the wealth, status, and sense of purpose he enjoyed. He failed.

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^[1] Wall Street, 20^th Century Fox, 1987.

^[2] Tim Metz, Black Monday: the catastrophe of October 19, 1987, and beyond. New York: W. Morrow, 1988. 21.

^[3] Metz, 28.

^[4] Robert T. Metz v Independent Trust Corporation (1993), US Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

^[5] United States vs Serfling (2007), US Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

One of our favorite guests, Malcom Kyeyune, returns to offer his thoughts on Donald Trump (Malcom thinks he’s a moron) and the ongoing Iran conflict (he thinks America is DOOMed to failure). If you’re tired of following the herd and want a nice stiff dose of reality, you’ve come to the right place. Tune in, turn on, drop out, and embrace the collapse of Western Civilization—and don’t forget to like and subscribe!

The words “conspiracy theory” get thrown around a lot. Some see conspiracy theories as the best explanation for our current world. Others use the term to dismiss uncomfortable evidence. (“Child trafficking is just a QAnon conspiracy theory!”) If we’re going to talk about the issue, we first must define what we’re talking about.

First, we have to acknowledge that conspiracies happen all the time. A few local businesses get together in a smoky back room and set price floors; a couple accountants and junior employees set up a scheme to embezzle money from clients; a politician takes an envelope full of money from a developer in exchange for pushing through the proper permits. People get arrested for conspiracies all the time, which suggests that many, perhaps most conspiracies are never brought to light.

Basic engineering theory shows that the more complex your mechanism, the more failure points you must deal with. A conspiracy that involves a few people who know and trust each other is relatively safe—though very few criminals are entirely trustworthy when they’re under an interrogation lamp. But as your conspiracy stretches out to hundreds, thousands, or hundreds of thousands of participants, preserving radio silence becomes increasingly difficult.

People have trouble keeping secrets. A conspiracy of three or four can vet its participants closely. A conspiracy of thousands is likely to include at least one incompetent idiot, informant, or loose-lipped jabberjaw. And once the genie gets out of the bottle, it’s very difficult to put him back. Every conspiracy is one leak away from exposure and every conspirator is a potential failure point.

That being said, there are certainly cases where large organizations successfully store and manage large quantities of secret information. The CIA, NKVD, and many other espionage agencies acquire data from many sources and use it to launch classified operations. They ensure secrecy by keeping information compartmentalized and shared on a “need to know” basis. Only a few people know the full scope of the operation; others know only that they have been assigned a task.

Yet even with all these precautions secret information regularly gets sold, published, or leaked to enemies. Daniel Ellsberg was so disgusted by America’s Vietnam policies that he leaked the Pentagon Papers. Pressed for money after a messy divorce, Aldrich Ames sold classified information to the Soviet Union between 1985 and his 1994 arrest. Jonathan Pollard provided classified information to Israel. Even the best espionage agencies struggle to keep a lid on their operations.

Still, while there are occasional leaks, these agencies as a general rule succeed in keeping their secret operations secret. So we must acknowledge that large organizations are indeed capable of pulling strings from the shadows. Conspiracy theories may seem unlikely, but we cannot dismiss them out of hand as impossible. Let’s step into the shadows for a moment and learn how professional spies do—and don’t do—covert operations.

When we hear the word “spy,” we often imagine James Bond. He’s smooth, stylish, and seductive. Evil overlords, secret criminal organizations, and Korean assassins with razor blade bowler hat boomerangs are no match for 007. Her Majesty’s Secret Service knows it can count on Bond to take care of the worst crises.

There’s only one problem: Bond is a great action hero, but as a spy, he sucks.

The best spy is the one nobody notices. James Bond is about as subtle as his Savile Row tailored suits, British sports cars, and revolving door of supermodels hanging on his arm. He regularly gets involved in public fisticuffs, uses his real name, and is known to virtually every spy and criminal in the world. They call them “secret agents” for a reason. Bond is anything but.

David Cornwell, who wrote under the pen name “John Le Carré,” spent years in MI5 and MI6. He was finally able to retire from the trade when his 1963 novel The Spy Who Came in from the Cold became an international bestseller. George Smiley, his most well-remembered character, is a paunchy, unremarkable man who is more likely to be mistaken for an accountant than a spy. You wouldn’t remember Smiley fifteen minutes after you met him.

Fleming’s villains are easy to spot. SMERSH, SPECTRE, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, Auric Goldfinger, and Dr. No are cartoonish bad guys. They possess few redeeming qualities and exist largely as foils for Bond. Readers never find themselves concerned about Bond’s ethics, nor does 007 ever have to worry about expense reports or political bickering between his superiors.

In le Carré’s world, everybody is compromised. Spies for every country recruit informants, manipulate assets, spread disinformation, and sacrifice individuals for larger objectives. One gets the sense that the principal difference between British, Soviet, and American spies is the flag they serve. Espionage is a profession like diplomacy or politics, with all the backbiting, deception, and bureaucratic infighting that entails.

Espionage agencies have budgets. Those budgets may be classified, but they are still audited. Spies in the field are often pulled from assignments because the higher-ups no longer feel the intelligence justifies the expense. They are also prone to infighting. Agents jockey for position, obstruct rivals, and occasionally sacrifice old friends in pursuit of career advancement. They behave like bureaucratic institutions, not like comic book teams.

Spies do not have unlimited funds for superweapons and race cars. They do not have a blank check to break the law or assassinate citizens. These operations carry enormous political, legal, and financial risks. Someone has to justify the costs, approve the expenditure, and answer uncomfortable questions if things go wrong. Any “license to kill” comes with many terms and conditions, and most spies will go through their entire career without using a weapon.

Any secret bureaucratic operation will be bound by these constraints. This is not to say that there are never rogue operations, cover-ups, misappropriation of funds, or overreach. But those actions will be kept as limited in scope as possible and involve as few participants as possible. The more sensitive the operation and the greater the risk of exposure, the smaller the circle tends to be.

This does not conclusively disprove the existence of large-scale conspiracies involving thousands of people. But it suggests that most secret operations are far more cautious, compartmentalized, and limited in scope. Many conspiracy theories assume unlimited budgets, flawless coordination, and perfect secrecy. These visions of vast all-powerful conspiracies owe more to James Bond than George Smiley.

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Let’s see what George Smiley would have to say about staging the Sandy Hook shooting.

First, he would want to know what the operation required. How many men will be on the ground for the staging? Where did you hire the crisis actors? Will you be using child crisis actors or dummies? Each has advantages and disadvantages. Have the local police been briefed on this, or are you going to be using police actors? How closely have you vetted the people involved, keeping in mind the consequences of an unauthorized disclosure? (NDAs are for corporations; espionage agencies aren’t going to rely on a signature and a promise).

Smiley would be asking many hard questions about the size of the operation. Every participant who knows the truth must be trusted to remain silent indefinitely. That means every participant is a potential failure point. He would want to know why a supposedly competent organization is choosing a method that creates so many opportunities for exposure. And being Smiley, he might even note that it would be considerably easier to send in a single shooter, then terminate him with extreme prejudice.

Intelligence officers spend their careers reducing risks, limiting participants, and compartmentalizing information. The larger the operation, the less it resembles a CIA black op and the more it resembles a Hollywood screenplay.

Smiley would then ask what exactly the agency has to gain from this fake shooting. When told that it is an operation to promote federal gun control laws, he’d mutter something about the bloody Americans and their guns. Then he would ask if there weren’t simpler ways to get that message across. Put a few billboards on the side of the road; run ads on the telly; work with a charismatic politician on a moving speech to be televised at the next convention. He might conclude by noting the team needs a public relations firm, not an intelligence agency.

He would not necessarily regard the staged shooting as immoral; Smiley has spent his career surrounded by misdirection, disinformation, manipulation and outright lies. But he would regard it as something he finds even more distasteful: sloppy, poorly constructed, and unnecessary. A competent intelligence officer looks for the simplest, most reliable path. This staged shooting maximizes costs, risks, and opportunities for exposure. It achieves nothing that could not be accomplished by less dramatic means.

Covert operations are expensive and risky. Secrecy is difficult to maintain. Smiley would rather use his limited resources to necessary intelligence work. This whole operation would strike him as a comedy of errors.

Again, this does not rule out an agency going rogue and doing something remarkably stupid. Never underestimate an organization’s capacity for collective foolishness. But this particular plot isn’t even something out of a James Bond movie. It’s Dr. Evil plotting world domination with Number 2, Frau Farbissina, and Fat Bastard. It would require a covert operations team to violate all the basic principles of intelligence work, from compartmentalized information and limited exposure to clear objectives and efficient use of resources.

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The tradecraft of espionage favors simplicity. The tradecraft of conspiracy theory often relies on ever-growing circles of influence. The participants in the Sandy Hook staged shooting have remained silent because they fear for their lives and their families. This means they are being watched by enforcement officials who know the hoax and are willing to take extreme measures to keep it silent. And, presumably, somebody is watching over those officials.

The news media has gone along with the hoax because journalists are controlled by government handlers. But the news media regularly issues stories that are unflattering to the government. And while Alex Jones was ultimately sued due to what Sandy Hook deniers call lawfare and others call libel, he “exposed the truth” for years before he was dragged to court.

The Hunter Biden laptop and Trump’s visits to Epstein Island have been widely publicized. Efforts to suppress the first failed miserably; the second remains a popular topic on social media. If the government apparatus couldn’t keep a lid on these embarrassing stories, are we to assume they kept an operation the size of Sandy Hook under wraps for almost fifteen years?

George Smiley spends Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy looking for a single mole in “the Circus” (a fictionalized MI6). He narrows his list of possible moles as the story progresses; his circle of guilt grows smaller with each bit of information he gathers. Ultimately, he finds the mole because he is seeking a precise goal, not a chart listing the friends and family of every prospective Russian agent on British soil.

Conspiracy theories more frequently act through a process of agglutination. Instead of concentrating on a single guilty party or organization, the conspiracy grows to include other events. A disputed election is linked to the pandemic; the pandemic is linked to secret societies, intelligence agencies, and global financial institutions. The ideal is a single “Great Conspiracy” that accounts for everything from chemtrails and COVID death shots to Sandy Hook and the fake moon landing.

These theories are attractive because they provide the semblance of structure. A world filled with competing interests, accidental events, bureaucratic failures, and unpunished crimes is frightening and uncertain. Reducing every problem to a single cause makes the world feel like a simpler place.

But the world is not a simple place. George Smiley solves mysteries by eliminating contradictions. The Great Conspiracy responds to contradictions by absorbing new events, new enemies, and new assumptions. And what started as an attempt to explain the world ultimately becomes a way of explaining everything—and therefore explains nothing at all.

Smiley’s methods lead to unpleasant truths, but they provide the Circus with options. A mole can be arrested. An agent can be recruited. A compromised operation can be abandoned, repaired, or concealed behind a plausible alibi. Smiley’s purpose is not merely to understand the world but to act within it.

The Great Conspiracy gives believers a malevolent Demiurge who controls every aspect of modern life. He prints money, programs minds, and stages the events that the unenlightened mistake for reality. Yet where the Gnostics believed escape was possible through spiritual awakening, the Great Conspiracy offers no path to liberation. It gives believers nothing but the satisfaction of knowing that the Demiurge exists. It tells them they live in the Matrix but offers no Neo.

This is the paradox at the heart of the Great Conspiracy. Believers imagine themselves empowered by hidden knowledge, yet each new revelation only further cements the Conspiracy’s ultimate power. The more comprehensive the conspiracy becomes, the less room remains for meaningful action. Smiley’s discoveries create choices. The Great Conspiracy eliminates them.

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My objection is not to conspiracies. Conspiracies happen every day. Neither do I doubt that powerful people lie. Everybody lies. Powerful people have more incentive to do so than most, and greater resources to broadcast their lies and silence inconvenient truths. Many falsehoods have been accepted as facts until exposed. Many conspiracies were dismissed as rumors or paranoia until facts and evidence came to light.

I object to the belief that a single, hidden force controls every significant event in our lives. There’s a difference between “powerful” and “omnipotent.” Tycoons, oligarchs, governments, and corporations all compete and pursue conflicting interests. They feud; they undermine rivals; they struggle for advantage. They are embarrassed by scandals, exposed by whistleblowers, and thwarted by competitors. Like every individual and every institution, they are limited by ambition and error.

Many believe that Occam’s Razor says that the simplest answer is the correct one. That’s a misreading. Many innocent people have spent decades in prison because juries believed a simple, compelling, and incorrect accusation. It is entirely possible that there is more going on behind the scenes than we suspect. But while the simplest answer may not be correct, it’s generally the best place to start.

We also hear that “extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.” That’s another misreading. Extraordinary claims require the same sort of evidence as ordinary ones; evidence that can be examined, tested, and verified. If someone tells you the sun sets in the west, you can look toward the horizon at dusk and see whether the claim is true . If you’re told the world is secretly ruled by shapeshifting reptilian aliens, you are entitled to ask what evidence led the claimant to that conclusion.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. The fact that we cannot find proof of a conspiracy does not mean that no conspiracy exists. A competent covert operation will take careful steps to ensure plausible deniability. There have been many conspiracies that only came to light years later.

But absence of evidence is not proof of a cover-up, either. A lack of proof may mean somebody concealed the truth, but it may also mean that the original claim was invalid. If every failure to find evidence is treated as evidence, then the theory becomes impossible to test. If you find evidence, it’s proof of a conspiracy; if you find no evidence, it’s proof of a very skillful conspiracy.

The world is full of conspiracies. It is not governed by one. Skepticism not only requires us to question official narratives. It also demands that we question our own.

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[1] John Le Carré, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. London: Book Club Associates, 1975. 73.

Between 2000 and 2006, U.S. home prices nearly doubled. Interest rates were low and credit was easy to come by; many people turned to real estate speculation as a second income and others used their homes as cash machines through easy equity loans. In early 2006 prices began to cool. Most assumed it was just a temporary lull, but the price declines continued throughout the year and into 2007. As 2007 came to a close, that lull showed no signs of stopping. By 2008 it had become the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

Homeowners found themselves hopelessly underwater, especially as unemployment rates climbed. Banks foreclosed on millions of properties, often reselling homes for less than the outstanding mortgage balance. Mortgage-backed securities had offered higher yields than US government bonds and had been marketed to investors around the world. As more homeowners defaulted, those securities collapsed in value. The American housing downturn became a global financial crisis.

While it has gone down in history as the “Great Recession,” it might more accurately be called the “Lesser Depression.” We never reached the 25% unemployment levels of the 1930s, but many Americans lost their homes, jobs, and retirement savings. Consumer bankruptcies spiked 32% in 2008.^[2] Relief was harder to come by after the 2005 Bankruptcy Abuse Protection and Consumer Protection Act (BAPCPA). Many debtors were forced into extended repayment plans even as their jobs, income, and housing remained uncertain.

By 2011, consumer bankruptcies were down from 2010’s record 1,538,033 high, but they were still nearly twice the 2007 numbers. The 2008 Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) injected hundreds of billions of dollars into institutions that were deemed “too big to fail.” But many of these institutions had created the overheated housing market that led to the crash. For Americans who were still struggling, it seemed like the companies that helped create the crisis were being rescued from their bad decisions while taxpayers footed the bill and bore the consequences.

On September 17, 2011—six days after the tenth anniversary of 9/11—several hundred protestors gathered in Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan’s Financial District. They were angry about foreclosures, unemployment, and a political system that seemed to care more about wealthy donors and corporations than ordinary citizens. They wanted to see those rescue efforts extended to struggling Americans. And they were here, in the belly of the beast, to make sure the 1% heard the voices of the other 99%.

The original protest was called for by Micah White, Kalle Lasn, and other members of Adbusters, a Canadian anti-consumerist publication. They had called for protests against income inequality and the growing influence of large corporations. But they could not have anticipated just how widely that message would resonate. By October 3 the protests had spread to Boston, Los Angeles, and Chicago.

Americans were divided on the Zuccotti Park protests. Jeremy Varon of the New School For Social Research declared the protests were “the Obama generation declaring their independence from his administration.”^[3] Dan Gainor at Fox News opined that the anarchists and hippies of OWS were showing America what democracy smells like. But even as he criticized the “socialists, Code Pinkers, anarchists, and more,” Gainor noted that “these protests do reflect the genuine economic fears that many Americans feel.”^[4]

In The New Republic, Ruy Teixiera noted:

Occupy Wall Street identified a grievance that resonated far beyond the political left. Americans across the political spectrum shared OWS concerns about economic power, political influence, and the growing divide between America’s wealthiest citizens and the rest of us. Many of us assumed this was the beginning of a new populist movement in America. I certainly did. Yet within a few years Occupy Wall Street had largely disappeared.

We could blame Occupy Wall Street’s decline and fall on powerful and wealthy interests who felt threatened by their message. But even the wealthiest and most powerful plutocrats would have a hard time convincing the public that equal opportunity was a bad thing. Occupy’s core grievances reflected concerns shared across the political spectrum. Screaming “pay no attention to those men behind the curtain” should be no more effective for a secret society than it was for the Wizard of Oz.

And yet within a few months, we were paying no attention to them.

What led to OWS’s failure may have more to do with a changing media than with a shadowy conspiracy. The Occupy movement was designed for a world of mass politics. But in 2011 America was fast becoming a land of niches, tribes, and algorithmic outrage.

On September 21, 2012, brothers Omar and Rafael Rivero started a Facebook page they called “Occupy Democrats.” This page soon became one of the Left’s leading sources for news and information.

The information provided wasn’t always correct: Politfact rates eight of the 22 Occupy Democrats claims it checked as “False” and four as “Pants on Fire.” (Two were “Mostly True” and seven “Half-True”). But despite widespread criticism for its fast and loose approach to facts, in May 2020 nearly half the top-performing Facebook videos which mentioned “Trump” were from Occupy Democrats.

While it borrowed Occupy’s language and imagery, Occupy Democrats operated very differently. It was a centralized media brand rather than a decentralized protest movement. It shifted its focus from the 1% to the Republican Party and quickly became one of the Left’s most influential social media outlets. It was less interested in building a broad coalition than in mobilizing a partisan audience. Occupy Wall Street tried to unite the 99%. Occupy Democrats focused on building a loud and angry tribe.

In terms of staying power and reach, Occupy Democrats was unquestionably more successful than Occupy Wall Street. The Rivero brothers built one of the Left’s most successful and influential social media operations. Yet neither movement substantially altered the economic and political climate that inspired the original protests. Occupy Wall Street captured parks. Occupy Democrats captured viewers. Neither captured power.

In the late 80s and early 90s, what we would come to call “Cultural Marxism” or “Political Correctness” was largely confined to universities, big cities and graduate students. Hip writers might name-drop Foucault or Marcuse, but few had the time or interest to slog through dense tomes of political theory. It was a language for eggheads and by eggheads, and far less than one percent of the population understood it. Yet those abstruse and verbose texts proved far more durable and influential than the simple, largely accurate slogan “we are the 99%.”

When the encampments closed, Occupy Wall Street had little to show for them. As a leaderless resistance movement, there was nobody there to tell participants what came next. They shared a few broad principles, most of which remain popular today. But there was no common strategy for turning those principles into policy. They were still the 99% and the 1% remained firmly in charge.

Occupy Democrats remains active today; Trump’s second term gave them a new lease on life. But the social media landscape it helped pioneer has become increasingly crowded. Many partisan organizations and influencers now compete for eyeballs and engagement. Younger audiences get their political information from online personalities and podcasters, while older audiences are more likely to seek out traditional outlets. Occupy Democrats no longer dominates the space because there is no longer a single conversation to dominate.

While these mass movements struggle, or fail, to remain relevant, cultural political theory remains remarkably durable. It occupies much the same status as Marxism occupied during much of the 20^th century. Some embrace it, others reject it, but few can avoid engaging with it entirely. We never seized the means of production, but we’re still speaking in the language of the Sexual Revolution and the Long March through the Institutions. Identity, privilege, systemic power, and representation now shape debates much as the proletariat and the capitalist once did.

Occupy Wall Street attracted sympathizers. Occupy Democrats attracted subscribers. Cultural theory, like the Marxism from whence it came, attracted specialists. The seminal texts are difficult to read and appeal primarily to highly committed intellectuals. Those intellectuals create institutions and interpret, apply, and argue about these arcane texts.

This kind of engagement is more rarefied than protest movements, but it may also be more durable. Over time an obscure preoccupation of intellectuals can acquire institutional power. The process is slow, almost imperceptible. You never notice the long march until it reaches its crescendo. Then it becomes deafening.

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Aleister Crowley believed that history unfolded through a succession of Aeons, each governed by a different principle. The old Aeon of Osiris, the Sacrificed God, was now giving way to the Aeon of Horus, the Crowned and Conquering Child. Whether or not you accept his cosmology, it may be useful for understanding why Occupy Wall Street failed.

My reading of Crowley is admittedly idiosyncratic. To avoid controversy, I should note that many Thelemites would disagree with my ideas, just as they disagree with each other. It’s “Do What Thou Wilt,” not “Do What We Do.”

The Aeon of Osiris gave birth to the World Religions. In the Aeon of Isis and times past, worship was firmly grounded in time, place, and ethnicity. Empires might subsume an alien religion into their own practices; the Romans had temples to Zeus Ammon-Ra in Egypt and Grannus Apollo in Gaul, while the Victorian English used Hinduism as a jumping-off point for Theosophy. But Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Marxism all claimed universal truths that transcended the boundaries of tribe, nation, and kinship.

Aeons, like all historical transitions, are porous. World religions incorporated local cults and traditions as often as they displaced them. Pilgrims who once traveled to Eleusis later journeyed to Jerusalem, Rome, or Mecca. Marxism, the last great faith of Osiris, sought to subsume the individual into the class. It provided the foundation on which the new faiths would arise, just as Greco-Roman paganism and philosophy helped shape early Christianity.

Occupy Wall Street was largely influenced by the language and traditions of early labor and socialist movements. It focused on solidarity, collective action, and a movement dedicated to “the 99%,” a broader and more inclusive vision of Marx’s “workers of the world.” In an earlier time, that message might have proven more successful. There was certainly a great deal of anger to channel and a growing suspicion about impending plutocracy. But Occupy was ultimately an Old Aeon movement in a New Aeon world.

Occupy Democrats used the trappings of OWS but aimed for a smaller audience and gave it bigger, more personal targets to hate. OWS’s broad critique of concentrated power became an extended partisan attack on Republicans and conservatives. Occupy Democrats memes garnered scorn and praise in nearly equal quantities. But to the Facebook algorithms, engagement was engagement. People who reposted the memes with the comment “Truth!” and those who replied “Get a load of these idiots” both spread the message.

The language of cultural theory continued to seep into the broader culture. Few read Kimberlé Crenshaw’s legal scholarship directly, but many understood intersectionality as a call to recognize overlapping forms of oppression and solidarity among marginalized groups. Judith Butler’s dense ideas on gender performance inspired gender flags and manifestos of new sexual identities and demands for recognition.

These ideas became simpler and more accessible than the academic texts and often differed widely from the source material. This is nothing new; ideas change as they move from scholars and institutions into the wider public. What matters for our purposes is the shift from Osirian Marxism to the Cultural Theory of Horus. Individuals no longer saw themselves as part of a greater class so much as intersections of multiple identities, each of which could be emphasized, negotiated, or foregrounded depending on circumstance.

Occupy Wall Street’s concerns remain valid. We are still dealing with the effects of concentrated wealth, institutional distrust, and political alienation. OWS did not fail because its message was wrong. Most of its tenets were widely accepted even by those who looked askance at the protest camps. Its weakness lay in its methodology. Occupy Wall Street tried to organize people around a universal identity at a time when culture was moving toward narrower, more personal identities.

Today we can see the fragmentation of media and politics more clearly. Citizens have become audiences and identities have become the building blocks of new tribes. The institutions and influencers who have come to power in this new Aeon have mastered its focus on self-definition, self-development, and self-discovery. We create and recreate ourselves within our media bubbles; we are content to belong to the right factions and have little concern for the other 99%.

The Age of Horus has brought us a new sense of selfhood, but it has also led to polarization, exhaustion, distrust, and an inability to act collectively. Many of us have channeled our efforts at bettering the world toward the fantasies of online discourse rather than the dirty and difficult business of changing things on the ground. Where once we might have camped out in protest, today we make our displeasure known by memes and insults. There is no “identity” without “I.” But civilization is not first-person singular.

The 99% has not disappeared. It has simply stopped imagining itself as a “we” in favor of a loose conglomeration of competing identities. The questions Occupy Wall Street asked remain largely unanswered and the 1% are fast losing ground to the 0.1% and the 0.01%. The grievances remain, but the will to organize collectively against them has largely been subsumed into small groups that take pride in their isolation and alienation. It remains to be seen what new vision, creed, or catastrophe will transform our squabbling bands of Crowned and Conquering Children into the New Aeon’s imperial religion.

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[1] Occupy Wall Street Manifesto, September 17, 2011.

[2] United States Courts, “Just the Facts: Consumer Bankruptcy Filings, 2006-2017.” (March 7, 2018). https://www.uscourts.gov/data-news/judiciary-news/2018/03/07/just-facts-consumer-bankruptcy-filings-2006-2017.

[3] Todd Gitlin, “The Left Declares its Independence.” New York Times, October 8, 2011.

[4] Dan Gainor, “Occupy Wall Street—More Than Just Another Loony Protest Movement from the Left,” (October 23, 2011). Fox News, https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/occupy-wall-street-more-than-just-another-loony-protest-movement-from-the-left.

[5] Ruy Teixera, “Why a Majority of Americans Are Getting Behind Occupy Wall Street,” The New Republic, October 20, 2011. https://newrepublic.com/article/96459/occupy-wall-street-income-inequality.

[6] Aleister Crowley, The Book of the Law (Liber AL vel Legis), 1904. Introduction V: The Next Step.

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