Ribbons and Nylons
The writer Ann Hite has been obsessed with the 1915 lynching of Leo Frank since she was a young girl. This poem is based on a statement about the lynching from Frank’s wife, Lucille Selig Frank.
Leo Frank was the superintendent of an Atlanta pencil factory. He was convicted in 1913 of the murder of a 13-year-old factory employee, Mary Phagan. After Georgia’s governor commuted his sentence from death to life in prison, a mob kidnapped him from prison and lynched him in Marietta, Georgia. In recent years, researchers have concluded that Frank was wrongly convicted, and in 1986, the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles posthumously pardoned Frank.
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“I am a Georgia girl, born and reared in this state, and educated in her schools. I am a Jewess.”*
Those that say you care are flawed. Your passion is not about Mary
a child working hard to help her family survive.
You turn your head so as not to see young hands toiling
before the sun comes up, stopping only
when the sun dips down, earning what breakfast costs for a day.
Mary, a child, a girl, who plays with friends when free time allots.
Mary, who shied from men because she was innocent.
Mary, running a machine in a dark factory,
Mary, thoughts of playing outside, sun shining, friends laughing.
Mary, dreaming of a life with flowers, new clothes, happy times.
Mary found in the dead of the night
at the bottom of pencil factory,
coal dust and soot.
Night watchman, making his rounds,
running to the office to call the boss
ring, ring, ring.
“They perhaps are not entirely to blame,
Fed as they were on lies unspeakable,
Their passion aroused by designing persons.”
Designing persons, you lined up young girls, children,
one after another, paraded them to the
witness stand.
Each walked the aisle in their Sunday best,
pointing a finger.
Designing persons, you opened the windows to the heat outside.
Crowds straining to catch a glance,
hanging on every word.
Mary’s family, friends, coworkers filling seats.
Those who could see their own daughters
in the picture you painted.
Crowds outside the window packed in a frenzy
a deep need for judgement,
a need for erasure so murder couldn’t happen again.
Where was God on those hot, hot days.
Kill the Jew
sang on the rooftops.
Buildings the Jews fought to build, a city
where hate wouldn’t exist
but now echoes through the air.
A price to pay. Death.
Mary, a child with dreams
dashed in the basement of the pencil factory.
Beautiful lavender dress stained with blood, her blood.
Gray heels smudged, broken.
Bows ripped from auburn hair.
Matching umbrella ground into coal dust.
“I am also Georgian, and American, and I do not apologize for that, either.”
Where were the designing people who now seek revenge?
Where were they on the day of Mary’s death?
Did not they protect her? Did they know her?
All marching in a parade,
a celebration of bondage,
of cruelty and death,
speeches and flags,
ribbons and nylons.
“Guilty,” repeated twelve times
with each chime of the clock tower.
Outside the windows,
cheers and hats in the air.
His sharp, delicate face, small-boned,
Wire-rimmed glasses perched
on his slender nose.
My hand touching the wooden bench,
not unlike a church pew in an unholy place,
fingers wanting to caress his vulnerable neck.
Christians believe Christ can heal with a mere touch
of a hand to the hem of his robe.
Roll up your mat and walk.
Belief in the courtroom that justice was done.
Hearts believe what they are taught,
whether right or wrong,
weak or strong.
“Some of them, I am sure did not realize the horror of their act. But those who inspired these men to do this unlawful act, what of them?”
Someone must pay for the death.
And what becomes of the blood on your hands, designing persons?
An eye for an eye
a rope around the neck
a tomb with no bed.
“Will not their consciences make for the hell on Earth, and will not their associates, in their hearts despise them?”
The italicized parts of this poem are from the last public statement Lucille Selig Frank made about the lynching of her husband, Leo Frank. Frank was lynched in Marietta, Georgia, at daybreak on August 17, 1915. Ann Hite first encountered the story of Leo Frank when she was 10. Her grandmother told of seeing Frank in the back of an automobile on the way to his execution at the hands of vigilantes. In the telling, Ann tried to picture Frank placing his wedding ring in the hand of one of his kidnappers with the request that his wife, Lucille, receive it after his death. Hite’s obsession with — and research into — the details of the event and Lucille’s story resulted in this poem. Ann Hite is the author of eight fiction books and an upcoming nonfiction narrative about Lucille Selig Frank.