Published: 1915
Total Pages: 67
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Thomas Edward "Tom" Watson€(1856--1922) was an€politician, newspaper editor, and writer from Georgia.€In the 1890s Watson championed poor farmers as a leader of the€Populist Party, €while attacking business, bankers, railroads, Democratic President Cleveland, and the Democratic Party.€He was a leader on the left in the 1890s, calling on poor whites (and poor blacks) to unite against the elites.€ As his own personal wealth grew, however, €Watson denounced socialism, which had drawn many converts from the ashes of Populism. He became a vigorous anti-Jewish€and anti-Catholic€crusader, and advocated reorganizing the Ku Klux Klan.€However after 1900 he shifted to Nativist attacks on blacks, Jews and Catholics. Two years prior to his death, he was elected to the U.S. Senate. In 1913 Watson played a prominent role through his newspaper in inflaming public opinion in the case of Leo Frank, a Jewish American€factory manager who was accused of the murder of€a 13-year-old female factory worker.€On August 16, 1915, Frank was abducted from his prison cell by a group of prominent men and lynched, an act which Watson had both called for and later celebrated on the pages of€The Jeffersonian. In his magazine, Watson claims to reveal all the facts of the case, but his biased point of view is evident from the title of the piece. The Frank case and lynching were infamous; many plays and movies have been made about it. Frank, whose guilt was based on circumstantial evidence, had already served 2 years of a life sentence when he was lynched.
