Leo Frank National Pencil Factory Case

Leo Frank, a manager of a National Pencil Factory, was accused of murdering Mary Phagan, a thirteen-year-old girl who worked in the factory in Atlanta, Georgia, 1913. The case formulated in the factory in Georgia and grew to a national standpoint within the Supreme Court. Leo Frank was found guilty of murder and was first sentenced to be hanged, but his sentence was changed to life imprisonment in 1915. Leo Frank was later pulled from jail and lynched by a crowd. Through mobs, newspapers and other media, social tensions arose across America because of the Leo Frank case. Social tensions such as Leo Frank being Jewish, differences between the north and south, racism, and gender roles arose from the case. Leo Frank faced religious persecution

After the murder of Mary Phagan an issue of chivalry rose between the north and the south. During this period, the north and south had just come out of a period known as Reconstruction after the Civil War, and economically the south was in bad shape compared to the north. Leo Frank, who was born and educated in the north, moved down to the south to become a superintendent at a National Pencil Factory. Frank was resented by the south because he took prosperity from the south. He was considered a “carpetbagger” and was despised because he stole from the south. The north was trying to distinguish themselves from the south because of Frank being lynched was an embarrassment and reverting to antebellum America. Newspapers in the south would reply to the accusations of having no chivalry by blaming the northern store owners. Northern papers like The Ocala Evening Star points out that the south is “shifting the responsibility for the child labor of the south on these factory owners!” . Tensions rose between the north and south because the differed on chivalry. The murder of Mary Phagan brought attention farther than the case of Leo Frank just to distinguish the north and the south. The Norwich Bulletin speaks of the instance when “Bully Brooks” beat writer Charles Sumner in South Carolina. This also caused more social tension between the north and the south because it reminded the south of another

Social tensions such as religious persecution, geographic strains, racist, and gender standpoints were affected socially by the case of Leo Frank. The case was not fairly determined in court because people were quick to persecute a person who was unaccepted than an actual murderer. All these social tensions were challenges of what people in the south knew as normal, and the force to change from antebellum to a new age brought a rise of these social tensions. The case of Frank was a stressful time in American history that left a mark on society and separated the nation by basis of beliefs and comfort from normal life to constant