Cornell University will honor the memory of alumnus Leo Frank, Class of 1906, with an art opening, a talk and a movie on Monday, Oct. 25, Thursday, Oct. 28, and Monday, Nov. 1, respectively. All events are free and open to the public.

A reception for a touring exhibit of the Leo Frank Collection will be held Monday, Oct. 25, at 5:30 p.m. in the Willard Straight Hall Art Gallery. The exhibit, part of the holdings of the Breman Museum in Atlanta, runs until Nov. 5.

On Thursday, Oct. 28, "A Tribute to Leo Frank" will be held at 4:30 p.m. in the Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium of Goldwin Smith Hall. Steve Oney, author of And the Dead Shall Rise , is guest speaker. Oney, a former Atlanta-Constitution reporter, spent more than 17 years researching the infamous Frank murder case. Catherine Smithline, a great-niece of Frank, and Ariella Saperstein, assistant director of community service for the Anti-Defamation League-New York region, also will attend the tribute. Oney will dine with students afterward and discuss his lecture and answer questions.

On Monday, Nov. 1, at 7 p.m., a screening of the 1988 TV movie "The Murder of Mary Phagan," 1988, starring Jack Lemmon, will be shown in 165 McGraw Hall.

In 1913 Frank, a graduate of the College of Engineering, was accused of murdering Mary Phagan, a 13-year-old worker at the National Pencil Factory in Atlanta, where Frank was superintendent. In one of the most sensationalized trials of the 20th century, Frank was convicted of the crime and sentenced to death.

His appeals to the Georgia Supreme Court and to the U.S. Supreme Court were dismissed on technical grounds. According to his profile in The 100 Most Notable Cornellians , "pressure mounted for a retrial, commutation, or pardon. Petitions containing more than a million signatures poured into Georgia. Among those who protested the verdict were Cornell students, alumni clubs, and (Cornell) President Jacob Gould Schurman."Upon re-examining the evidence, Georgia Gov. John Slaton commuted Frank's sentence to life imprisonment.

In 1915 Frank was kidnapped from his cell and lynched by a group calling itself the Knights of Mary Phagan – a revival of the Ku Klux Klan. They were, in fact, movers and shakers in the Marietta, Ga., community where Frank was tried. Frank's lynching led to the re-establishment of the Klan, largely invisible since its rise in the antebellum South. But Frank's lynching also led to the formation of the Anti-Defamation League. In 1986 the state of Georgia granted Frank a posthumous pardon – closing the league's extensive files on the case.

The Frank tribute, organized by Cornell senior Julia Levy, a resident of Marietta, Ga., is sponsored through Cornell Hillel and the Jewish Student Union, the College of Engineering, Cornell Law School, Jewish Studies, American Studies, Student Assemblies Finance Commission and the Vice Provost for Academic Programs.