Leo Frank lynching site (Marietta, Georgia)

USA / Georgia / Marietta / Marietta, Georgia
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Coordinates:   33°57'2"N   84°31'1"W

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  • 93 years after the lynching death of Jewish businessman Leo Frank, Georgia elected officials, Jewish leaders and historical preservationists dedicated a state historical marker March 7 on the site in Marietta where Frank was hanged. The unveiling ceremony took place at 1200 Roswell Road in Marietta and featured remarks by Cobb County Board of Commissioners Chairman Sam Olens, State Senator Steve Thompson, former Gov. Roy Barnes, Cobb County Rabbi Steven Lebow and representatives of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). Leo Frank, manager of the National Pencil Company in Atlanta, was convicted of the murder of 13-year-old factory employee Mary Phagan of Marietta in 1913. On August 17, 1915, after his sentence was commuted from death to life in prison by Governor John Slaton, Frank was abducted from the state prison in Milledgeville, driven to Marietta and hanged. The marker is the first official recognition by the state of the site where Frank died. The Georgia Historical Society, the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation, Congregation Kol Emeth and the ADL worked together to have the location of the lynching recognized as a historic site.
  • Although this is hearsay from my childhood and can no longer be verified, I offer a possible, minor correction to the location of the lynch site. As a child in 1958-1962, I played in the wooded area of the reported lynch site. There were older boys in the neighborhood who pointed out a tree as the lynching tree. They based their information on supposedly older relatives who had first hand knowledge. Was that accurate? Quite a few times after I left out of the back of the then Dog-N-Suds, I would look at that tree and wonder. They indicated the site as a little more south, (almost behind the current 23 Frey's Gin Rd) of what is annotated on this map. (Frey's Gin Ct was not there back then). I conferred with my two older brothers and they concurred with my recollection. They had also been given the same information when we were children. Is this correct? We will probably never know, but I offer it as a possibility to consider.
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