Leo Frank and Lucille Frank

Leo Frank (1884 - 1915) and Lucille Frank (1888 - 1957)

A native of Brooklyn, New York, Leo Frank moved to Atlanta to manage his uncle’s National Pencil Factory. He married Lucille S. Selig and became president of the local B’nai B’rith lodge. On Confederate Memorial Day, April 26, 1913, thirteen-year old Mary Anne Phagan was found murdered in the basement of the factory, and Frank, the superintendent, was arrested for the crime. The events that followed—one of the most sensational trials of the century, Frank’s conviction, the commutation of his death sentence, and his subsequent lynching on August 17, 1915—polarized Atlanta, captured the attention and sympathies of national and international audiences, and launched far-ranging social, legal and cultural changes.

The Frank trial sensationalized the perils of factory life for women and children and advanced anti-Semitic among the working poor. David Marx, son of Rabbi Marx, said in a 1978 interview, “There had always been anti-Semitism, but the Frank case brought everything to the surface.” Frank was posthumously pardoned in 1986 by the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles. Along with The Temple bombing in 1958, the Leo Frank case and lynching served as a defining moment in Atlanta's Jewish community in the twentieth century. Lucille remained an active member of The Temple and the Standard Club after Leo’s death, though she never remarried. She is buried in Oakland Cemetery.