Frank, Leo, 1884-1915

Leo Frank, a Jewish Atlanta businessman and Superintendent and Vice President of the National Pencil Factory, Atlanta, Georgia, was born 17 April 1884, in Paris, Texas, and died 17 August 1915, in Marietta, Georgia. Frank was sentenced to death by hanging (1913) for the murder of Mary Phagan, an employee he supervised at the National Pencil Factory. His sentence was commuted to life imprisonment (July 1915) because of doubt by some trial officials as to his guilt. Frank was abducted by a mob (August 1915) and taken from a prison farm outside Milledgeville, Georgia, to Marietta, Georgia, where he was hung. On 22 December 1986, a posthumous pardon was granted to Leo Frank by the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles on the grounds that the state had failed to adequately protect his life and chance for further appeal.

Leo Frank, Jewish superintendent of the National Pencil Factory, was tried and convicted for the murder of Mary Phagan, a thirteen year old employee of the factory. Leo Frank's death sentence was commuted by Governor John M. Slaton to life in prison, but Frank was lynched by an anger mob.

Engineer; victim of anti-Semitic trial and lynch mob; resident of Atlanta, Ga.