Dorsey’s initiatives began a drop in the illiteracy rate and established much-needed reforms for the state’s lagging educational system. A 1920 amendment to the law required county school taxes and abolished the legal limitations on Black education. It included mandatory attendance, codification of existing laws, the creation of an illiteracy commission, and the qualifications and duties for a board of education. In 1919 the legislature passed the most comprehensive school law to that date.
Tax exemptions were granted for incorporated colleges, academies, seminaries, church property, public spaces, and charity institutions, and a board of public welfare was created to inspect jails and reformatories. Responding to the labor shortage due to World War I and the outmigration of African Americans, the legislature passed a compulsory work law. During his tenure the convention method of election was replaced statewide by the county unit system, which favored rural areas. He was reelected in 1918 by a substantial margin. At forty-five, Dorsey was the youngest man in the race, and he easily defeated incumbent Nat Harris and two other candidates. Openly supported by Watson, he ran on a platform of law enforcement and noninterference of government in judicial proceedings. A mob snatched Frank from his Milledgeville cell, carried him to Marietta, then lynched him and mutilated his body.ĭorsey, who was unknown until the Frank case, rode his newfound popularity to the gubernatorial race of 1916. Slaton commuted Frank’s sentence, protests erupted, led by Watson. Dorsey’s vigorous prosecution and subsequent success in the case won him favor with Watson.
#MARIETTA CITY CEMETERY MARY PHAGAN TRIAL#
The Frank trial was conducted in a carnival-like atmosphere fueled in part by the anti-Semitic rhetoric of political giant Thomas E. In his short tenure as solicitor, Dorsey had prosecuted two other high-profile cases and failed to win a conviction in either one. In 1913 young mill worker Mary Phagan was found murdered in the basement of the Atlanta Pencil Factory, and her Jewish employer, Leo Frank, was accused of the crime. The following year Dorsey married Adair Wilkinson of Valdosta. In 1910 he was appointed solicitor general of the Atlanta Judicial Circuit, filling the unexpired term of Charles D. He returned to Atlanta the next year to practice law in his father’s firm of Dorsey, Brewster, and Howell (later Dorsey, Brewster, Howell, and Heyman), where he later became a partner. He studied at the University of Georgia in 1889-93 and at the University of Virginia law school in 1894. Dorsey attended Atlanta public schools as well as private schools in Atlanta and Hartwell. Hugh Manson Dorsey was born in Fayetteville on July 10, 1871, to Matilda Bennett and Rufus Thomas Dorsey, a prominent attorney. Courtesy of Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Georgia Libraries.
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