Mary Phagan

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Who are Mary Phagan and her supected murderers? Mary Phagan was a thirteen old employee of the National Pencil Company. Her parents were poor tenant farmers that moved to Marietta, Georgia. Everyone said that Mary Phagan was a pretty girl, which meant that she would grow into a beautiful woman. HG Mary went to the National Pencil Company to pick up her weekly check of a grand total of $1.20 for twelve hours of grueling work. Afterwards she had planned on watching the Confederate Memorial Day parade. Mary was one of the workers who inserted the eraser into the brass section of the end of the pencil. She was found murdered in the factory on April 26, 1913. That fateful day was within one week of Mary’s fourteenth birthday.. Leo Frank, factory superintendent, was the last person to see her alive. He was born in Texas and then raised in New York City. He was of the Jewish faith. Leo Frank was a graduate of Cornell University. He had moved to Atlanta in 1908 and became the superintendent of the National Pencil Company. He was also an Atlanta socialite. Leo Frank was a member of a Jewish Fraternal Order. Newt Lee was the first African-American that the National Pencil Company as a night watchman. At the time of Mary Phagan’s murder, he had only been working there for three weeks. April 25, 1913 (the day before) Frank told him to report at four the next day but when Lee arrived at the factory Frank let him off until six. He came back and began his rounds. Nothing was out of the ordinary until Frank called him later that day at seven to ask everything is “all right”? He had never done that before. Newt Lee discovered Mary Phagan’s bruised and bloody body and called the police around 3:30 in the morning, Jim Conley was the factory jani... ... middle of paper ... ...nti-Semitic accusations boosted his newspaper sales and stimulated an influx of letters praising him and his publication. Governor Slaton was under immense pressure from his consituents to let the courts’ verdict stand. He went through extensive research about Mary Phagan’s murder before he made his decision. Slaton reviewed more than 10,000 pages of documents, visited the pencil factory where the murder had taken place, and finally decided that Frank was innocent. Gov. John Slaton commuted Leo Frank’s sentence to life in prison on June 21st, 1915 assuming that Frank's innocence would eventually be fully established and he would be set free. The Lynching of Leo Frank On August 16th, 1915 Leo Frank was taken by a mob from the state prison at Milledgeville. He was hanged by the Knights of Mary Phagan in Marrietta, Georgia on August 17th, 1915. Who Killed Mary Phagan?

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