Marker in Marietta will remember Leo Frank case

Metro Atlanta

A historical marker placed in Marietta will help remember the place where Leo Frank was lynched nine decades ago.

About 50 government, civic and religious leaders attended the unveiling of a state historical marker, placed near an I-75 bridge over Roswell Road at Frey's Gin Court, that tells the story of Leo Frank.

Leo Frank, a Jewish factory superintendent in Atlanta, was convicted of killing a teenage girl who worked for him in 1913.

On April 26, 1913, Mary Phagan was found strangled in the basement of the National Pencil Factory in downtown Atlanta.

The all-white jury believed black janitor Jim Conley who accused Frank of killing Phagan when she spurned his advances.

Frank's trial lasted nearly four weeks. The case, William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum officials say, laid out in newspaper interviews and police statements, the city of Atlanta --its prejudices too.

The day after the jury found Frank guilty, a judge sentenced him to hang, setting in motion a series of appeals which prompted court officials to delay his execution three times.

The mob shattered the windows on the door of Frank's jail cell when they kidnapped him. Journalist Steve Oney found the door at the abandoned state prison farm in Milledgeville while he was working on a book about the case and alerted Berman to its existence.

The mob, calling themselves the Knights of Mary Phagan, lynched hanged Frank from a tree not far from the spot where Marietta's Big Chicken now stands. This plaque, on the side of a building, near the intersection of Frey's Gin Court and Roswell Road, remembers Frank who was granted a post humous pardon in 1986.

Bill Nigut, Southeastern Regional Director of the Anti-Defamation League, at the marker's site. "It's a great day when we can remember the worst that hatred can produce and how far we have come," Nigut said.

During that marker unveiling, many in the group wore "No Place for Hate" stickers.

Rabbi Steven Lebow, of Temple Kol Emeth, stands in front of the newest marker remembering Leo Frank. "This is an unfortunate part of Marietta's history, but it needs to be remembered," Lebow said. "For Jews, memory is the beginning of redemption."

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About 50 government, civic and religious leaders attended the unveiling of a state historical marker, placed near an I-75 bridge over Roswell Road at Frey's Gin Court, that tells the story of Leo Frank.

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