- Mary Phagan
Mary Phagan (
June 1 ,1899 -April 26 ,1913 ), born inMarietta, Georgia was an employee of the National Pencil Factory inAtlanta , on the premises of which she was raped and strangled onApril 26 ,1913 .A
Jewish-American manager of the factory,Leo Frank , was accused of the crime, based largely on circumstantial evidence and possibly perjured testimony. He was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. Shortly before his execution was to take place,John Marshall Slaton , the governor of Georgia, commuted the sentence to life imprisonment. However, a mob kidnapped Frank from prison and lynched him.Mary Phagan may actually have been murdered by Jim Conley, an
African American working in Frank's factory, [cite news
first = | last = | authorlink = | author = | coauthors = | title = Indicted For Girl's Murder; Leo A. Frank Accused In Case That Has Taken Political Turn | url = | work =The New York Times | publisher = | location = | id = | pages = | date = May 25, 1913 ] [cite news
first = Larry | last = Worthy | authorlink = | author = | coauthors = | title = Little Secrets | url = http://ngeorgia.com/feature/littlesecrets.html | work = About North Georgia | publisher = | location = | id = | pages = | date = ] [cite book|title=The Many Faces of Judge Lynch |last= Waldrep |first=Christopher |isbn=0-312-29399-2 |publisher=Palgrave MacMillan |year=2002 |location=New York] though Conley was convicted of being an accessory after the fact. The incident helped spark a revival of theKu Klux Klan in the United States.On
March 4 ,1982 Alonzo Mann, a teenager at the time of the murder, admitted, in contradiction to his testimony at the trial, that he saw Conley carry Phagan's body. [cite book|title=The Silent and the Damned: The Murder of Mary Phagan and the Lynching of Leo Frank|first=Robert |last=Frey|isbn=081541188X |publisher=Cooper Square Press |year=2002]In 1983, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles refused to grant Leo Frank a posthumous pardon, finding that Mann's testimony, even if true, did not fully absolve Frank of the crime. In 1986, the Board did issue Frank the pardon, not on the grounds that they thought him innocent, but because his lynching deprived him of his right to further appeal. [cite web|url=http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/frank.html|title=Leo Frank|publisher=Jewish Virtual Library]
The Phagan family still contends that Leo Frank was the real perpetrator of the crime, [cite news
first = | last = | authorlink = | author = | coauthors = | title = Leo Frank killed Mary Phagan, says grand-niece | url = http://theatre_chick.tripod.com/Phagan.htm | work =The Atlanta Journal-Constitution | publisher = | location = | id = | pages = | date = January 6, 1999 ] and has always repudiated the Klan's use of this case for its own purposes. Mary's great-niece, also named Mary Phagan, wrote a book about the case in 1987. [cite book|title=The Murder of Little Mary Phagan|first=Mary |last=Phagan|isbn=0882820397 |publisher=New Horizon Press |year=1987]In 1988, popular interest in this case increased with the broadcast of "
The Murder of Mary Phagan ", a made for television film, and again in 1998 with the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical "Parade (musical) ".References
External links
* [http://ngeorgia.com/feature/littlesecrets.html More info on the case of the murder of Mary Phagan]
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