Phagan family on pardon of Leo Frank

Mary Phagan

Celebrated in song as "Little Mary Phagan" after her murder on Confederate Memorial Day, 1913, in Atlanta. Grave marked by CSA veterans in 1915. Tribute by Tom Watson set 1933. Leo Frank, sentenced to hang, granted clemency before lynching, Aug. 17, 1915. His 1986 pardon is based on State's failure to protect him/apprehend killers, not Frank's innocence.

Second version of Mary Phagan Historical Marker at Marietta Cemetery in Georgia

Celebrated in song as "Little Mary Phagan" after her murder at age 13 on April 26, 1913 in Atlanta. The trial and conviction of Leo Frank were controversial, as was the commutation of his death sentence four days before Confederate Veterans marked her grave on June 25, 1915. He was abducted from prison and lynched August 17, 1915. In 1986, he was issued a pardon.

Little Mary Phagan graveside marker

Little Mary Phagan

Mary Phagan, daughter of Fannie and John Phagan, was born on June 1, 1899 in Florence Alabama. She was a beautiful little girl with a fair complexion, blue eyes, dimples, long reddish brown hair, and was jovial, happy, and thoughtful towards others. On April 26, 1913, Mary planned to go up [to] the National Pencil Company to pick up her pay of $1.20 and then watch the Confederate Memorial Day Parade. She told her mother she would be home after the parade. Mary did not return home that afternoon and was found raped and murdered in the basement of the National Pencil Company around 3:00 a.m. on April 27, 1913. Mary was 13 years old. Leo Frank, Superintendent of the National Pencil Company was arrested, tried, and convicted for the rape and murder of Mary Phagan. Leo Frank was lynched August 17, 1915 by the Knights of Mary Phagan. No Phagan was involved in the lynching. The 1986 pardon does not exonerate Leo Frank for the murder of "Little Mary Phagan".

Letter from Judge Randall Evans Jr. about Leo Frank Pardon

COURT OF APPEALS

OF THE

STATE OF GEORGIA

ATLANTA

March 18, 1986

RANDALL EVANS, JR.

JUDGE

(Retired)

Honorable Joe Boone

Box 265

Toombsboro, Georgia

Dear Joe:

Thank you very much for the book - I am sure I will enjoy it.

I was not surprised at the Leo Frank pardon. The Jewish Community, aided by Joe Frank Harris and that Atlanta Newspapers, conducted their inquiry by stealth. A pardon to a dead man has no value whatever and is as illegal as anything every could be.

A pardon must be applied for by the individual and it is personal - just as a divorce is personal. After death, a divorce (and pardon) can not be granted.

With assurance of personal esteem, I am

Sincerely,

Randall Evans, Jr.

Family of Mary Phagan protests marker change

Without a formal vote and with the press absent, Marietta City Council has changed the inscription on the city's historic marker at the grave of rape-murder victim Mary Phagan in the Marietta City Cemetery. The Phagan family is blaming Councilman Philip Goldstein.

The descendants of Miss Phagan are upset because the family was not notified before or after the change, and only learned of it on a cemetery-cleaning visit. The family says the newly-placed marker - which sits on a city-maintained path near the grave and is not to be confused with Miss Phagan's ornate tombstone, which makes no mention of the circumstances of her death - omits the reason for the 1986 posthumous pardon given Leo Frank.

Frank - Miss Phagan's boss - was convicted in 1913 by a Fulton Superior Court jury of the 13-year-old girl's murder in an Atlanta pencil factory and sentenced to hang. When Gov. John Slaton commuted Frank's sentence to life in 1915, a group of Marietta men abducted Frank from the state prison near Milledgeville and lynched him near what is now the Big Chicken on Frey's Gin Road in Marietta.

The Phagan family initially opposed placing a marker at their ancestor's grave, fearing there would be increased damage to the cemetery plot and curiosity seekers would leave graffiti. That hasn't happened. Late Mayor Joe Mack Wilson told east Cobb resident and Cherokee County special education teacher Mary Phagan Keen (sic), a great-niece of Mary Phagan, that the grave was the most sought by visitors to Marietta and should have a marker, along with several other notable graves in the cemetery.

Mayor Wilson told the Phagan family the city would let them approve the text of the marker. The family insisted the unusual conditions of Frank's 1986 pardon be explained. That was done. Now controversy has arisen because that portion of the marker has been changed.

The Georgia Pardons and Parole Board in 1983 turned down a request for a pardon based on Frank's alleged innocence. Frank's former office boy, Alonzo Mann, told two Nashville Tennesseean newsmen he saw black janitor Jim Conley holding a limp body in his arms the day of the murder. In its 1983 denial of a pardon for Frank, the board said after Mann's testimony it "did not find conclusive evidence proving beyond any doubt that Frank was innocent."

A new parole board then granted Frank a pardon in 19896 on the grounds the state did not protect him in prison, thereby allowing him to be lynched and thus ending any further court appeals. Frank's conviction was appealed unsuccessfully by his lawyers three times to the Georgia Supreme Court and twice to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The 1986 pardon said: "Without attempting to address the question of guilt or innocence, and in recognition of the state's failure to protect the person of Leo M. Frank and thereby preserve his opportunity for continued legal appeal of his conviction, and in recognition of the state's failure to bring his killers to justice, and as an effort to heal old wounds...the board hereby grants to Leo M. Frank a pardon." The family opposed the 1986 pardon, and now is irked at the council and Goldstein.

"We are as much a victim as the family of Leo Frank," said Ms. Keen. For 80 years, we have been the object of the curosity[sic]-seekers and subjected to unfair and untrue books and TV docudramas. The current council didn't show the same respect to us as did Mayor Wilson and a previous council." Ms. Keen's father, James Phagan, said the action was "extremely insensitive of the council" and "disingenuous of Councilman Goldstein. How can you separate Mary Phagan and Leo Frank?" he asked. "Can you mention the Holocaust and not mention Hitler? It's simply pandering by Councilman Goldstein to a segment of the community. It's another effort to change history."

The inscription change was made by the Parks and Tourism Committee chaired by Councilman Dan Cox. Members are Councilwoman Betty Hunter and Goldstein. The full council OK'd the action. Cox admitted the committee had yielded to "political pressure" by Goldstein and the Jewish community. Calling the change "a no-win situation," Cox said he reluctantly consented to the change "because it offended a part of the community."

On the 80th anniversary of Frank's lynching Aug. 17, a group of Jewish leaders led by Rabbi Steven Lebow of Temple Kol Emeth in east Cobb said the historic marker at Mary Phagan's grave should be removed. The group placed a small plaque in the side of the VPI Corp. building owned by Roy Varner at 1200 Roswell St., near the site of Frank's lynching. The plaque reads: "Wrongly Accused, Falsely Convicted and Wantonly Murdered." Attending the ceremony were Marietta Councilmen Goldstein and James Dodd, who told Jewish leaders they would look into removing the line of the marker that refers to the pardon conditions.

"This is a plaque that marks the grave of Mary Phagan," said Goldstein. "The last two lines deal with information on Leo Frank, and it's not his grave." Goldstein was quoted in the Jewish Times as saying: "The wording is factually correct. The mention of Frank on Phagan's marker should be deleted because it is irrelevant, not because it upsets the Jewish community."

It was Dodd who brought the matter before council, supported by Goldstein. "This is a lose-lose situation for me," Goldstein said. The marker referring to the condition of Frank's pardon has been removed and replaced with a previous marker the Phagan family had objected to.