Prejudice: Racial and Religious

Racism

Antisemitism

Jim Crow

Voting rights were restricted through literacy tests, grandfather laws (you could vote if your grandfather could vote), and poll taxes.
Racial segregation of public spaces was entirely legal at the state and local level.
By 1907, voting laws and segregation acts had been enacted in every single state
The threat of lynching always loomed over African Americans, especially men.

Conditions

Life expectancy for African Americans was about 12 years shorter than for whites
Approximately half of African American adults were illiterate
90% lived in the South
75% worked as sharecroppers—exchanged high portion of their harvest for right to farm land
Twice as many African Americans arrested and convicted of crime in Atlanta
Black convicts frequently leased into dangerous working conditions—25% of leased convicts died

Assimilation

While Atlanta had a large Christian majority, there existed an old and established Jewish population, in which Lucille Selig Frank grew up. Her grandfather had founded Atlanta's first synagogue. Jewish Atlantans founded their own community groups and fraternities, including B'nai B'rath, of which Leo Frank was president.

These were mainly wealthier German Jews who attempted to assimilate into elite Atlanta's Christian society. Reform rabbi David Marx, for example, began holding synagogue on Sunday mornings to align with Christian masses and services. While Jews were still outsiders in many ways, this group often maintained friendly professional and personal relationships with Atlanta's Christian majority.

Immigration

From the 1890s onward, Atlanta saw a wave of new immigrants, many of them Russian and Eastern European Jews. These people were foreign and poor; they followed more traditional Orthodox Judaism; and they often did business with Atlanta's African Americans.

Atlanta's wealthier Jews raised some money to help the new immigrants; however, they strove to make it clear that they were not like these Jews, and that they fit in better with Atlanta's majority.