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Article: The return of the repressed: Leo Frank through the eyes of Oscar Micheaux.(Murder in Harlem, Mary Phagan's murder portrayal)
- Article from:
- Shofar
- Article date:
- June 22, 2005
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2005 University of Nebraska Press. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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This article examines how pioneer African American filmmaker Oscar Micheaux, in his 1935 film Murder in Harlem, radically altered the traditional understanding of the 1913 murder of Mary Phagan and the ensuant trial, conviction, and lynching of Leo Frank. By rejecting the accepted--racist--preconceptions of the case, and by using the genre of the detective story to retell, and reexamine, this material, Micheaux made a unique and vital contribution to how issues of racism as well as antisemitism affected not only the Leo Frank trial but the literature surrounding it as well.
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The 1913 murder of Mary Phagan in Atlanta and the trial, ...