Is black the new Jewish?

August 17^th – Kick back, it’s short fiction time.

In 1913 America, in the good ole’ state of Georgia, a girl’s body is found; it is that of 13 year old Mary Phagan and she’s been raped then strangled. A guy is arrested and charged but claims his innocence, suggesting it might have been the factory manager. The factory manager is arrested and put on trial in Atlanta. Despite his protestations to the contrary and with evidence that is planted, witnesses bought and paid for and criminal or other proceedings dropped against others for testifying for the prosecution, the factory manager is found guilty and sentenced to death. The departing Governor, John M. Slaton, deeply troubled by the trial’s background and information given to him concerning wrongdoing by a collusion of police and prosecutor, commutes the death sentence to life and the prisoner is removed from Atlanta to a prison in Milledgeville just 50 miles south of the state capitol. He is there barely days when he is kidnapped, on this day in 1915, by 25 armed men, who called themselves the Knights of Mary Phagan. Their number included an electrician to cut the prison wires, car mechanics to keep the cars running, a locksmith, a telephone man, a medic, a hangman, and a lay preacher (gotta remember God in their work). The factory manager is kidnapped from the prison, driven the 150 miles to Marietta, where Mary Phagan came from, and lynched from a tree.

So. Worthy of a musical? I was thinking maybe of developing it as one about racial bigotry and lynching would make great West End copy… Oh, bugger…it’s been done… Rethink…

See, when the musical, Parade which told the above story (oh, BTW it’s a true one…I wasn’t winging it) when the musical, Parade, opened it garnered a Tony Award and six Drama Desk Awards for Best Book and Best Original Score and has enjoyed regular revivals both nationally and internationally.

OK, well, we can run some other sideline here. I mean, there’s obvious links to the depiction of other racial disgraces like Mississippi Burning and The Negro… Oh, bugger, the factory manager wasn’t black, he was Jewish… Rethink…

See, when the crime above was first discovered the US was in yet another politically created state of terror and introspection. The presence of Jews holding high positions of commerce and money lending (banks to you lot) was beginning to bother American citizens, particularly those good ole’ all-American boys who were also in high positions of commerce and money lending (banks to you lot) but wanted more.

That’s why the press played the anti-Semitism card and planted stories and innuendo in the various daily’s so as to prejudge the above trial’s outcome, using the same words the former U.S. Representative, Thomas E. Watson used during the sensational coverage of the case in his own publications which pushed for a revival of the Ku Klux Klan, calling the factory manager a member of the Jewish aristocracy who had pursued Our Little Girl to a hideous death (you’ll recognise the language of The Sun, The Daily Mirror, The Daily Mail and The Daily Express in that phrase, no doubt).

So, as not to waste the marketing opportunity and in the spirit of true Jewish business opportunism, the Knights of Mary Phagan sold postcards of the lynching and its resultant corpse…25cents a pop. The perpertrators were all well-known locally but never identified until 2000, so a bit late for a trial… Included in their number was a Governor, two mayors, several sheriffs, a court judge, a district attorney, a banker (money lender to you lot) several business owners (I’ll bet) and a gaggle of local workers and fixers…hang on (sorry, sorry, pun not intended) but I’ve just seen a way in. See, Jim Conley, the factory's janitor, is believed by many historians to be the real murderer as testimony given later (much, much later) pretty well gives incontrovertible truth to this; so, how about the strap line for the New, New, Parade Musical which, in my book would be a first.

Man gets away with murder because for a short time the good folk of Georgia hated Jews more than they hated Negros…?

So, that’s all good then; all sorted. Does that work for you?