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Elizabeth Rasche Gonzalez
Elizabeth Gonzalez in a portrait photograph
Born
Elizabeth Grether Rasche

(1949-01-23)January 23, 1949
Fort Belvoir, VA, United States
DiedNovember 30, 2016(2016-11-30) (aged 67)
Chicago, Illinois, United States
Cause of deathAcute Myeloid Leukemia
Resting placeAshes spread at: Madison, WI, Santa Fe, NM, Taos, NM, and Washington, D.C.
NationalityAmerican
EducationBachelor's degree in mechanical engineering (1906), pencil manufacturing apprenticeship (1908)
Alma materUniversity of Wisconsin and DePaul University College of Law

Leo Max Frank (April 17, 1884 – August 17, 1915) was an American factory superintendent who was convicted in 1913 of the murder of a 13-year-old employee, Mary Phagan, in Atlanta, Georgia. His trial, and lynching two years later, attracted national attention and became the focus of social, regional, political, and racial concerns, particularly regarding antisemitism. Today, the consensus of researchers on the subject holds that Frank was wrongly convicted.

Born to a Jewish-American family in Texas, Frank was raised in New York and earned a degree in mechanical engineering from Cornell University before moving to Atlanta in 1908. Marrying in 1910, he involved himself with the city's Jewish community and was elected president of the Atlanta chapter of the B'nai B'rith, a Jewish fraternal organization, in 1912. Although antisemitism was not locally common, there were growing concerns regarding child labor at factories owned by members of the Jewish community. One of these children was Mary Phagan, who worked at the National Pencil Company where Frank was director. The girl was strangled on April 26, 1913, and found dead in the factory's cellar the next morning. Two notes, made to look as if she had written them, were found beside her body. Based on the mention of a "night witch", they implicated the night watchman, Newt Lee. Over the course of their investigations, the police arrested several men, including Lee, Frank, and Jim Conley, a janitor at the factory.