Learn All About the True Story Behind PARADE

One of the most anticipated musicals of the season is director Michael Arden's new production of Parade, led by Tony Award winner Ben Platt and Micaela Diamond. The show, which is currently in previews at Broadway's Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, is set to open on March 16, 2023.

"For the past couple of months, lots of people have been saying to me how important it is that we're bringing Parade to Broadway right now, how the world needs to see this story at this moment in time," wrote composer Jason Robert Brown following antisemitic protests outside of the theatre on the first night of previews. "Honestly, I've been kind of skeptical; the story's been there all along. But I have to acknowledge in light of last night's events that there's something about Ben Platt, a Jewish star, leading this American story about prejudice and scapegoating, right there in our weird little corner of the National Cultural Conversation, that really counts. Clearly it affects our audience. Obviously it's affecting the other side as well."

So what exactly about Parade's story is so controversial? If the musical is new to you, check out our Crash Course on Parade. If you are already a fan and want to learn more about the true story on which the show is based, we've gathered some of the best content devoted to the murder of Mary Phagan and the case of Leo Frank.

Most Notorious! A True Crime History
The Murder of Mary Phagan & the Lynching of Leo Frank

Episode Description: Steve Oney, tells the story of little Mary's murder, the investigation that followed, and highlights of Frank's sensational trial.

This Day in Esoteric Political History
Leo Frank and the KKK's Resurgence

Episode description: It's August 17th. This day in 1915, a Jewish man by the name of Leo Frank was kidnapped from jail and hanged by a mob in Marietta, Georgia. Jody, Niki, and Kellie discuss how the incident helped galvanize a resurgent Ku Klux Klan, and how much anti-Semitism should be part of the story of lynchings and mob violence in the early part of the 20th century.

My Favorite Murder
Every Plan Is A Bad Plan

Episode Description: Karen and Georgia cover the murder of Mary Phagan and revenge murder of Leo Frank, and the Wonderland murders.

The People vs. Leo Frank

The Temple at 150: The Leo Frank Case

Mary Phagan's 1913 murder, Leo Frank's subsequent Lynching, and their lasting impact on the Temple and Atlanta's Jewish community.

And the Dead Shall Rise: The Murder of Mary Phagan and the Lynching of Leo Frank
by Steve Oney

Description: And the Dead Shall Rise brings to life a Dickensian cast of characters caught up in the Frank case-zealous police investigators intent on protecting their department's reputation, even more zealous private detectives, cynical yet impressionable factory girls, intrepid reporters (including a young Harold Ross), lawyers blinded by their own interests and cowed by the populace's furor. And we meet four astonishing individuals: Jim Conley, who was Frank's confessed "accomplice" and the state's star witness; William Smith, a determined and idealistic lawyer who brilliantly prepared Conley for the defense's fierce cross-examination and then, a year later, underwent an extraordinary change of heart; Lucille Frank, the martyred wife of the convicted man; and the great populist leader Tom Watson, who manipulated the volatile and lethal outrage of Georgians against the forces of Northern privilege and capital that were seeking to free Frank.

The Leo Frank Case
by Leonard Dinnerstein

Description: The events surrounding the 1913 murder of the young Atlanta factory worker Mary Phagan and the subsequent lynching of Leo Frank, the transplanted northern Jew who was her employer and accused killer, were so wide ranging and tumultuous that they prompted both the founding of B'nai B'rith's Anti-Defamation League and the revival of the Ku Klux Klan. The Leo Frank Case was the first comprehensive account of not only Phagan's murder and Frank's trial and lynching but also the sensational newspaper coverage, popular hysteria, and legal demagoguery that surrounded these events.