“Atlanta in 1913 still hadn’t reached a half million in population—but it wanted to. It was a mule center and railroad town. But it had grown significantly since 1865.
“Oh, there was light industry, including the National Pencil Company at 37-39 Forsyth Street. Mills were the most numerous, and a few breweries.
“Life in 1913 was casual and slow. Folks got most of their news from local newspapers, which printed ’extra’ editions for late-breaking stories.
“Sanitary conditions were terrible. The facilities were few and far between and were located outside. Sanitation workers were called ‘honey dippers.’ Typhoid fever was all over the place.
“Boys wore knee pants until they completed grammar school. Women wore high laced high-heeled shoes and bloomers made of the same material as their dresses.
“There were no frozen foods. People had streak of lean and perhaps some beef for stew. Hogs were plentiful. Biscuits and milk gravy were staples. They had apples and oranges occasionally, but raisins had seeds in them.
“Photography was all over—not just in the newspaper. Tintype, most usually.
“For recreation, most entertained themselves. There was a form of baseball, ‘peg,’ that they played in quiet streets or in vacant lots. Movie theaters ran silent films on weekends, especially around the mill neighborhoods. The Grand Theater, the Bijou, and the Lakewood Amusement Park helped people forget their daily drudgery.
“The South hadn’t really recovered from the ravages of the War Between the States and Georgia was no exception. The economy was shifting from the land to industry. Families were resettling from small towns and farms into the urban areas. Wives and children were often forced to work in factories to help the family survive.
“Mary Phagan was a beautiful little girl with a fair complexion, blue eyes, and dimples. Her hair was long and reddish brown and fell softly about her shoulders. Since she was well developed, she could have passed for eighteen. Her family all called her Mary rather than her full name of Mary Anne.
“Mary was Grandmother Fannie’s youngest child. Your grandfather says that she had a bubbly personality and was the life of their home. Mary was jovial, happy, and thoughtful toward others. When she was with her family, she’d show her affection for them by sitting in their laps and hugging them.
“The last Phagan family gathering was a ‘welcome home’ for Uncle Charlie. There the family had begun to notice how beautiful Mary was. Lily, her cousin, who is still living, tells me that she envied Mary a particular dress she had on. It was called a ‘Mary Jane dress”—long, with a gathered skirt and fitted waist. Lily and her sister Willie were ‘skinny,’ and Mary’s dress looked better because she was ‘heavier’ than them. They both wanted their dresses to look like Mary’s did on them.
“Early in April, Mary was rehearsing for a play she was in at the First Christian Church. The play was ‘Sleeping Beauty,’ and of course Mary played the role of Sleeping Beauty. Your grandfather tells me that he would take Mary to the church and watch her rehearse. The scene where Sleeping Beauty is awakened by a kiss always made him and Mary giggle. She would watch her brother with her eyes half-closed, and then begin to giggle when he cracked a smile. It seemed that that scene took an eternity to rehearse.”
I could picture Mary on the stage playing the little Sleeping Beauty. “April twenty-sixth was Confederate Memorial Day, a Saturday, and a holiday complete with a parade and picnic. Mary planned to go up to the National Pencil Company to pick up her pay and then watch the parade. She told Grandmother Fannie she’d be home later that afternoon. One of the last things she did was to iron a white dress for Bible School on Sunday. She was a member of the Adrial Class of the First Christian Bible School, and she wanted to look her best so she might win the contest given by the school.
“She was excited about the holiday, though, and wore her special lavender dress, lace-trimmed, which her Aunt Lizzie had made for her, they tell me. Her undergarments included a corset with hose supporters, corset cover, knit underwear, an undershirt, drawers, a pair of silk garters, and a pair of hose. She wore a pair of low-heeled shoes and carried a silver mesh bag made of German silver, a handkerchief, and a new parasol.
“At 11:30 a.m. she ate some cabbage and bread for lunch. She left home at a quarter to twelve to go to the pencil factory. She was to pick up her pay of $1.20, a day’s work.” My father sighed and looked out the window.
“When Mary had not returned home at dusk, your great-grandmother began to worry. It was late, and she had no idea where Mary could be. Her husband went downtown to search for Mary. He thought perhaps she had used her pay to see the show at the Bijou Theater and waited there for the show to empty, but found no sign of her.
“He returned home and suggested to Fannie that Mary must have gone to Marietta to visit her grandfather, WJ. Since they had no telephone, they couldn’t communicate with the family to verify that Mary was with them. Fannie sort of accepted this explanation, since she knew how Mary loved her grandfather. It did seem plausible that she could be with the family in Marietta. But Fannie, being a mother, spent a restless night.”
My father paused, stared into the middle distance. I could see my grandfather pointing to Mary’s photograph, then to me, then sobbing almost uncontrollably. My father continued.
“The next day, April 27, 1913, Grandmother Fannie’s worst fears were confirmed. Helen Ferguson, their friend and neighbor, came to the house to tell them she had received a phone call about Mary. Their Mary had been found murdered in the basement of the National Pencil Company.
“The company, a four-story granite building plus basement, was located at 37-39 Forsyth Street. It employed some one hundred people, mostly women, who distributed and manufactured pencils. Its windows were grimy. It was dirty. It had little ventilation. Most of the workers were paid twelve cents an hour. It was in fact a sweat shop of the northern, urban variety.
“Mary worked in its second floor metal room fixing metal caps on pencils by machine. Her last day of work had been the previous Monday. She was told not to report back until a shipment of metal had arrived.
“Her body was discovered at three o’clock in the morning on April twenty-seventh, in the basement of the pencil company by the night watchman, Newt Lee. Her left eye had apparently been struck with a fist; she had an inch-and-a-half gash in the back of the head, and was strangled by a cord which was embedded in her neck.”
He shook his head sadly. “Her undergarments were torn and bloody and a piece of undergarment was around her hair, face, and neck. It appeared that her body had been dragged across the basement floor; there were fragments of soot, ashes, and pencil shavings on the body and drag marks leading from the elevator shaft.
“There didn’t seem to be any skin fragments or blood under her fingernails, which indicated she hadn’t inflicted any harm on whoever did it.
“Two scribbled notes were found near her body. They were on company carbon paper.”
Here, my father got up and walked across the room to the secretary against the far wall, opened the desk flap, reached in and retrieved a sheet of paper, and returned to his chair near the window. He handed me the sheet. It was a photostatic copy of two nearly-illiterate notes:
Mam that negro hire down here did this i went to make water and he push me doun that hole a long tall negro black that hoo it was long sleam tall negro i wright while play with me.
he said he wood love me and land doun play like night witch did it but that long tall black negro did buy his slef.
My father sat silently while I read the notes. When he continued, his voice was almost hoarse. “When they went up to tell William Jackson Phagan—now, that’s your grandfather’s grandfather, he said—my daddy remembered it word for word: ‘The living God will see to it that the brute is found and punished