On this day, April 26, in 1913, a young girl from Georgia named Mary Phagan went to the pencil factory where she worked to collect her weekly paycheck.
The 13-year old's strangled body was found the in the factory basement the next morning. The pencil factory superintendent, Leo Frank, was tried and convicted of murder. He was to spend life in prison, but a mob called the Knights of Mary Phagan kidnapped and lynched him after his sentencing. Years later, Frank's conviction was posthumously overturned after it was discovered that Jim Conley, the janitor, was likely the murderer. The Knights of Mary Phagan sparked the renewal of the Ku Klux Klan, and the persecution of Frank, who was Jewish, led to the creation of the Anti Defamation League.
