8 Amazing Murals You Can Find in Atlanta's Summerhill

We worked with local artist, Joe Dreher (Joe King ATL) to produce this mural. This wall is dedicated to Mary Phagan and Leo Frank, two Atlanta residents who were killed in the early 1900s. Summerhill was a hub of Jewish social and religious life from the 1880s until the late 1950s with construction of new highways.

In 1913, Leo M. Frank, a young Jewish superintendent at the National Pencil Company, was accused of killing factory worker Mary Phagan. At the time of his arrest, he and his wife, Lucille Selig Frank, lived on Georgia Avenue near the northwest corner of Washington Street. A highly controversial trial, fueled by societal tensions and antisemitism, resulted in a guilty verdict. In 1915, after Governor John M. Slaton commuted Frank’s sentence from death to life in prison, he was kidnapped from the state prison by prominent citizens of Cobb County. They took him to Marietta, where he was lynched before a local crowd. In 1986, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles issued a posthumous pardon to Leo M. Frank, based on the state’s failure to protect him while in custody; it did not absolve him of the crime of murder. Joe has done a lot of research on this history and says, “There’s a lot of talk about Leo Frank being a victim but I don’t want the original victim to be forgotten. Mary Phagan, the thirteen year old girl who was raped and murdered. My goal with this wall is to honor both of these victims and their families.”