Mary Phagan
On April 26, 1913, thirteen-year-old Mary Phagan is found sexually molested and murdered in the basement of an Atlanta pencil factory where she worked. Her murder later led to one of the most disgraceful episodes of bigotry, injustice, and mob violence in American history.
Found next to Phagan's body were two small notes that allegedly pin the crime on Newt Lee, the night watchman at the factory. Lee was arrested, but it quickly became evident that the notes were a crude attempt by a barely literate Jim Conley to cover up his own involvement. Conley was the factory's janitor, a black man.
Conley in turn shifted the blame on Leo Frank, the Jewish owner of the factory. Despite the absurdity of Conley's claims, they nevertheless took hold. The prosecutor Hugh Dorsey was a notorious bigot and friend of Georgia's populist leader, Tom Watson. Frank was tried by Judge Leonard Roan, who allowed the blatantly unfair trial to go forward even after he was privately informed by Conley's attorney his client had admitted to Frank's innocence on more than one occasion. The trial was packed with Watson's followers and readers of his racist newspaper the Jeffersonian. The jury was bullied into a conviction despite the complete lack of evidence against Frank.
Georgia governor John Slaton initiated his own investigation and quickly concluded that Frank was completely innocent. Three weeks before his term ended, Slaton commuted Frank's death sentence in the hope that he would eventually be freed when the publicity died down. However, Watson had other plans: He mobilized his supporters to form the Knights of Mary Phagan, which began a reign of terror. Thousands of Jewish residents in Atlanta were forced to flee the city because police refused to stop the lynch mob. The Knights of Mary Phagan then made their way to the prison farm where Frank was incarcerated. They handcuffed the warden and the guards and abducted Frank, bringing him to Marietta, Phagan's hometown. There he was hanged to death from a giant oak tree. Thousands of spectators came to watch and have their picture taken in front of his lifeless body. The police did nothing to stop the spectacle. Although most of the country was horrified by the lynching, Watson remained very popular in Georgia. In fact, he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1920. Frank did not receive a posthumous pardon until 1986, on the grounds that his lynching deprived him of his right to appeal his conviction.
Michael Thomas Barry is the author of Murder & Mayhem 52 Crimes that Shocked Early California 1849-1949. The book can be purchased from Amazon through the following link:
