Hugh Manson Dorsey was an Atlanta lawyer in one of the most famous murder cases in the history of the legal system in both the Peachtree State and America.
He was the prosecutor in the Leo Frank case in 1913 arising out of the murder and rape of a young factory worker at the National Pencil Company where Frank was the manager. A Jewish Northerner from Brooklyn, the case included sensational testimony of anti-semitism and racial bias.
Frank was convicted of capital murder and was sentenced to hang, but his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment by Governor John Station. Frank would subsequently be involuntarily taken out of the state prison at Milledgeville by vigilantes, taken to Marietta, and publicly executed by lynching for which no one was ever prosecuted.
As a result of his victory Dorsey would achieve state-wide fame and in 1917 was elected governor of the state. He would serve in that capacity until 1921 as the “youngest man ever to hold that office.”
In 1921 he unsuccessfully ran for the United States Senate against a former ally, Tom Watson, who was a vocal white supremacist.
As his term as governor was about to end and after his defeat by Watson, Dorsey gave an unusual speech by a white politician.
In it the soon-to-be-ex-governor expressed a long time list of “abuses by Georgia whites against African Americans: lynching, banishments, slavery-like peonage and physical cruelty.”
After the speech he was immediately attacked from all sides including his successor, Thomas Hardwick, who would call it “an infamous slander on the state.”
From a historical perspective, Dorsey’s motivations for such a speech in the Jim Crow South have been strongly disputed and debated.
His supporters have answered his critics by claiming that “he had an honest desire for reform.”
The detractors asserted that his purpose in the speech was “slowing down the early stages of the Great Migration to improve Georgia’s perception in the eyes of Northern capitalists.”
However, his outspoken position did not seem to affect his position with politicians and the public voters after he returned to the private practice of law.
In 1926 he was appointed judge of the civil division of the Superior Court in Atlanta and served until 1948 when he died in a local hospital.
As previously reported in two prior Chattanoogan.com articles, (9/20/21) and (11/01/21) the dramatic story of the Frank murder case has been reported on many times by groups advocating for his guilt or innocence.
Hugh Dorsey was portrayed in numerous accounts including the 1964 fictional account of the case Profiles in Courage 1989 Tv-miniseries, The Murder of Mary Phagan, and The Broadway Musical Parade.
(Attorney Hugh Dorsey is a significant historical individual in the State of Georgia.)
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You can reach Jerry Summers at jsummers@summersfirm.com