Mary Phagan was a 13-year-old white girl from Georgia who worked at the National Pencil Company in Atlanta.

On April 26, 1913, Mary went to the National Pencil Company, where she worked, to collect her wages of $1.20. She was last seen alive entering the factory. Newt Lee, the night watchman, found her body in the factory basement the next morning. Mary had been strangled with a cord, and her body showed signs of a struggle. Her dress was torn, and there were indications of sexual assault.

Leo Frank, the superintendent of the factory and a Jewish man originally from New York, was arrested and charged, and later convicted, with Mary Phagan's murder. All subsequent Frank’s appeals were all denied. Prejudice and ignorance about Jews and blacks ultimately decided the trial. However, Gov. John Slaton, uncertain of his guilt, commuted his sentence from death to life in prison in June 1915.

A lynch mob kidnapped him from the Milledgeville Prison Farm on the night of August 15-16, 1915, transferred him to Mary Phagan’s hometown of Marietta, and hanged him from a tree limb.

His conviction and death is considered one of the most infamous outbursts of anti-Semitic feeling in the United States. His trial and death shaped the nascent Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and led to the comeback of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). Frank was pardoned in 1986.