"Seeking Justice: The Leo Frank Case Revisited." William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum, Atlanta, Ga. http://www.thebreman.org/exhibitions/seeking_justice.htm

Abstract

Temporary exhibition, Feb. 17, 2008–March 22, 2009. 25,000 sq. ft. Jane Leavey and Sandra Berman, curators; Gary Super, designer. Making public history projects in Atlanta that deal with the events that culminated in the 1915 lynching of Leo Frank, the Jewish manager of a pencil factory who was accused of murdering a thirteen-year-old female employee, is to wade into a minefield of contention about one of Georgia's most storied crimes. Almost a century later, Frank's murder still triggers intense local debate in which perceptions of crime and punishment intersect with anxieties about the legacy of southern vigilante violence. Simply put, this lynching is history that still lives, and for some local museums this has been reason enough to leave the story of Leo Frank alone. “Seeking Justice” was the William Breman Jewish Heritage and Holocaust Museum's effort to use exhibit practice to mediate local passions about the meaning of Leo Frank's life and death. The exhibition was long in the making: local museum professionals at the Atlanta History Center tried in the early 1990s to incorporate the Leo Frank story into an installation exploring the myths of the American South, but the Frank portion was shelved because several museum board members voiced concerns about potential controversy. (The project “Disputed Territories: Myth, Mystery, and Memory in Atlanta History” eventually emerged—sans the Frank installation—at the museum as a permanent exhibit on the myths of the South popularized by Gone with the Wind [book, 1936; film, 1939].) While the Frank story was already incorporated in the Breman's permanent installation on Jewish life in Atlanta, “Seeking Justice” finally gave this important story its own interpretive frame.