296 Slide – American State Trials 1918 Volume X Leo Frank Document

264 X. AMERICAN STATE TRIALS.

[Mr. Arnold next deseribed the ‘horrible crime that had
been committed that afternoon or night in the National Pen-
cil Company’s dark basement. He dwelt on the effect of the
crime upon the people of Atlanta and of how high feeling
ran and still rons, and of the omnipresent desire for the
death of the man who committed the crime.]

There are fellows like that street car man, Kendley, the one
who villified this defendant here and eried for him to be
lynched, and shouted that he was guilty until he made him-
self a nuisance on the cars he ran. Why, I can hardly realize
that a man holding a position as responsible as that of a mo-
torman and a man with certain police powera and the discre-
tion necessary to guide a car through the crowded city streets
would give way to passion and prejudice like that, It was
a type of man like Kendley who said he did not know for sure
whether those negroes hanged in Decatur for the shooting of
the street car men were guilty, but he was glad they were
hung, as some negroes ought to be hanged for the crime. He’s
the same sort of a man who believes that there ought to be
a hanging because that innocent little girl was murdered,
and who would like to see this Jew here hang because some-
body ought to hang for it. .

T’'Ll tell you right now, if Frank hadn't been a Jew there
would never have been any: prosecution against him. I’m
asking my own people to turn him loose, asking them to do
justice to a Jew, and I’m not a Jew, but I would rather die
before doing injustice to a Jew.

This case has just been built up by degrees; they have a
monstrous perjurer here in the form of this Jim Conley
against Frank, You know what sort of a man Conley is, and
you know that up to the time the murder was committed no
one ever heard a word against Frank. Villainy like this
charged to him does not erop out in a day. There are long
mutterings of it for years before. There are only a few who
have ever said anything against Frank. I want to call your
attention later to the class of their witnessea and the class of
ours. A few floaters around the factory, out of the hundreds