Parade musical begins Kennedy Heart run amid rise of antisemitism : NPR

The nationwide tour of Parade, a Tony award-winning musical in regards to the real-life lynching of a Jewish man in 1915, arrives on the Kennedy Heart this week amid President Trump’s takeover of the establishment, and an antisemitic backlash amplified by a member of the Trump administration.

Parade, which ends its nationwide tour in Washington, dramatizes the homicide of Mary Phagan and the trial of Leo Frank, who’s extensively believed to have been falsely accused.

Although the case is greater than a century outdated, it continues to spark controversy from the far-right —together with neo-Nazis, right-wing influencers, and the present press secretary on the Division of Protection, who has denied accusations of antisemitism. As NPR has reported, a number of outstanding officers within the Trump administration have ties to antisemitic extremists and Holocaust deniers, even because the White Home says it’s targeted on combating antisemitic hate.

Trump’s transformation of the Kennedy Heart has included putting in himself as chairman and eradicating what he calls “woke political programming.” In response, some artists have canceled their performances on the storied venue.

Jason Robert Brown, who wrote the music and lyrics for Parade, took a distinct strategy.

“PARADE is enjoying the Kennedy Heart in August and we’re not altering One Phrase,” he wrote on social media in February following Trump’s takeover.

In an e-mail to NPR, Brown emphasised the significance of performing the present on the Kennedy Heart, which he known as “America’s stage.”

“PARADE is the story of Mary Phagan and Leo Frank, sure, however greater than that, it has at all times been the story of the currents of hatred operating beneath America,” Brown wrote. “As these currents appear in the meanwhile to be overflowing their banks, I’m grateful for the chance to share our counternarrative.”

The Leo Frank trial: a media circus

The homicide of Mary Phagan and the trial of Leo Frank was some of the infamous true-crime spectacles of the early twentieth century.

Within the early 1900s, Frank labored because the superintendent of a pencil manufacturing unit in Atlanta. He was an outsider a number of instances over: a northerner in a southern metropolis, an industrialist in an agricultural state, and a Jew in an overwhelmingly Christian society.

In 1913, 13-year-old Phagan, who labored on the manufacturing unit, was discovered useless within the constructing’s basement. Prosecutors, counting on scant proof, accused Frank of homicide. A Black janitor on the manufacturing unit, Jim Conley, claimed he had moved the useless physique to the basement at Frank’s request, although his story shifted over time. Frank maintained his innocence.

The following trial turned a media circus, warped by antisemitism, racism and the specter of mob violence. On the day of the decision, the decide stored Frank and his legal professional away from the courtroom, fearing an acquittal would spark vigilante violence.

Frank was convicted and sentenced to demise. Georgia’s governor commuted Frank’s sentence to life in jail amid rising doubts in regards to the proof.

In response, Tom Watson, a white supremacist Georgia politician and newspaper author, railed in opposition to Frank as a “Jewish hunter of gentile ladies” and known as for his lynching. On Aug. 16, 1915, a gaggle of males, together with some outstanding native leaders, stormed the jail the place Frank was being held, drove him to Phagan’s hometown and hanged him from an oak tree. Pictures of the lynching had been bought as postcards. The perpetrators had been by no means charged. Watson, who publicly incited and later defended the lynching, was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1920.

The incident fueled the revival of the Ku Klux Klan, but additionally the creation of the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish civil rights group. Historians have concluded that Frank was the sufferer of antisemitic prejudice and sure harmless. In 1986, the state of Georgia pardoned Frank, due to the state’s failure to guard him in custody and maintain his killers accountable.

From historical past to the stage

Playwright Alfred Uhry grew up in Atlanta within the shadow of the Frank case. His household was Jewish and knew the Franks, however he stated the story of the lynching was shrouded in thriller.

“The German Jewish neighborhood was very small,” Uhry advised NPR in an interview. “However once I was born, no one talked about it in any respect. I needed to go to the library to look it up once I was a child. It was crucial to me to have the ability to inform the story.”

Uhry, who gained an Oscar and Pulitzer Prize for the movie and play Driving Miss Daisy, went on to put in writing the 1998 musical Parade about Frank’s case. Although the present gained Tony awards, Uhry stated it was not a significant success.

The 2023 Broadway revival of Parade made a a lot larger mark.

“Both fortuitously or sadly, the zeitgeist was with us that the factor received very well timed,” Uhry stated.

A part of that zeitgeist was the rise of antisemitic hate.

In February 2023, a gaggle of white supremacists protested the manufacturing, handing out leaflets calling Frank a “pedophile.”

“It seemed identical to the props within the present,” Uhry stated.

“The neo-Nazi playbook” strikes to the mainstream

The extremist claims about Leo Frank have unfold past neo-Nazis.

In March 2023 — only a few weeks after the protest exterior of Parade made nationwide headlines — the correct wing influencer Kingsley Wilson posted on social media in regards to the case.

“Leo Frank raped & murdered a 13-year-old lady,” she wrote. “He additionally tried to border a black man for his crime. The ADL is demonic.”

(She later edited the put up to alter “demonic” to “despicable,” in keeping with the put up’s edit historical past on X.)

The next 12 months she repeated the accusation in response to the ADL’s commemoration of the anniversary of Frank’s lynching.

Earlier this 12 months, Wilson joined the Trump Administration. She now serves as press secretary for the Division of Protection.

The American Jewish Committee known as Wilson “unfit” for workplace, writing that she was sharing “antisemitic conspiracy theories lifted proper out of the neo-Nazi playbook.”

At a tense Senate listening to, Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth defended Wilson.

“She does a unbelievable job,” Hegseth stated. “And any suggestion that I or her or others are occasion to antisemitism is a mischaracterization trying to win political factors.”

“Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson has by no means promoted antisemitism,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell stated in a press release to NPR. “The ADL and different left-wing teams prefer it have erroneously attacked Mrs. Wilson’s character as a result of she is a fighter for President Trump and a loyal solider [sic] of Secretary Hegseth. We’ll proceed to dismiss this false accusation and concentrate on delivering President Trump’s America First agenda on the Division of Protection.”

The Pentagon declined to reply NPR’s query about whether or not Wilson stands by her social media posts in regards to the Frank case, which stay on-line.

The far-right influencer and conspiracy theorist Candace Owens has additionally promoted antisemitic theories about Frank on a number of episodes of her podcast.

“He appears to be like evil to me,” Owens stated in a single episode from 2024.

Owens has woven the Frank case right into a broader antisemitic narrative that alleges that Judaism and the state of Israel promote pedophilia.

Oren Segal, the senior vice chairman of counter-extremism and intelligence on the ADL, advised NPR in an interview that these narratives have migrated from extremist circles to the mainstream. He famous that the rise of the QAnon conspiracy concept, which incorporates allegations of a worldwide pedophile ring, has helped extremists repackage century-old hatred towards Frank for the social media age.

“Greater than 100 years later, the antisemitic mob nonetheless exists,” stated Segal. “They only will not be on the streets of Georgia, however they might be on each social media channel that all of us exist on. And so in some methods, it is the identical hatred, however the attain is way, a lot farther.”

Uhry declined to touch upon Wilson’s posts about Frank, saying he wished the main focus to stay on the artistry of Parade.

Author-composer Brown, in his e-mail to NPR, drew a pointy connection between the previous and current, noting the contrasting figures of Watson, the white supremacist politician who incited Frank’s lynching, and Georgia Gov. John Slaton, who commuted Frank’s sentence regardless of threats to his personal life.

“112 years after the homicide of Mary Phagan, the vile racist incitements spewed by Tom Watson proceed to be repeated by individuals on the highest ranges of our authorities,” he wrote, “and the bravery of Governor Slaton stays a robust instance of the dangers we have to be ready to take to struggle in opposition to injustice on this nation. You can not inform the story of America with out telling the story of Leo Frank and Mary Phagan.”