Lena Baker

Lena Baker
Lena Baker's February 23, 1945 mugshot
Born	(1900-06-08)June 8, 1900 Cuthbert, Georgia
Died	Reidsville, Georgia
Occupation	Maid
Criminal penalty	Death by electrocution
Criminal status	Executed
Children	3
Conviction(s)	Capital murder

Lena Baker (June 8, 1900 – March 5, 1945) was an African American maid who was falsely accused of capital murder by the state of Georgia in 1945 for killing her white employer, Ernest Knight, and executed by the state. At her trial she said that he had imprisoned and threatened to shoot her should she try to leave. She took his gun and shot him. Baker was the only woman to be executed by electrocution in Georgia.

The slaying and execution came at a time of official racial segregation and the suppression of civil rights of black citizens in Georgia. In 2005, sixty years after her execution, the state of Georgia granted Ms. Baker a full and unconditional pardon. The feature film The Lena Baker Story (2008) chronicles the events surrounding her early life and her execution.

Early life

Lena Baker was born June 8, 1900, to a poor black family of sharecroppers and raised near Cuthbert, Georgia. Her family moved to the county seat when she was a child. As a youth, she worked for a farmer named J.A. Cox, chopping cotton.

Later years

By the 1940s, Baker was the mother of three children and worked as a maid to support her family.

In 1944, Baker started working for Ernest Knight who had broken his leg. He owned a gristmill and held her there for days at a time against her will. One night an argument between the two ensued in which Knight threatened Baker with an iron bar. She tried to escape and shot and killed him. She immediately reported the incident and said she had acted in self-defense.

Trial and execution

Lena Baker was charged with capital murder and stood trial on August 14, 1944. The trial was presided over by Judge William "Two Gun" Worrill, who kept a pair of pistols on his judicial bench in plain view. The all-white, all-male jury convicted her by the end of the afternoon as persons of color and women had been disenfranchised and disqualified from jury service. After filing an appeal in the case, her court-appointed counsel, W.L. Ferguson, dropped Baker as a client.

Governor Ellis Arnall granted Baker a 60-day reprieve so that the Board of Pardons and Parole could review the case, but it denied Baker clemency in January 1945. She was transferred to Reidsville State Prison on February 23, 1945.

Upon entering the execution chamber, Baker sat in the electric chair and said:

What I done, I did in self-defense, or I would have been killed myself. Where I was I could not overcome it. God has forgiven me. I have nothing against anyone. I picked cotton for Mr. Pritchett, and he has been good to me. I am ready to go. I am one in the number. I am ready to meet my God. I have a very strong conscience.

Initially Baker was buried in an unmarked grave behind Mount Vernon Baptist Church. In 1998, members of the congregation arranged for a simple head stone.

In 2001, members of Baker's family began to mark the anniversary of her death at her graveside. Baker's grand-nephew, Roosevelt Curry, requested an official pardon in 2003, aided by the Georgia-based prison advocacy group, Prison and Jail Project. This was granted in 2005 with the Parole Board granting Baker a full and unconditional pardon. Commentators suggested that the Board of Pardons and Parole should have revised the charge as manslaughter in 1945, which would have carried a maximum 15-year sentence.

See also

• List of wrongful convictions in the United States

Further reading

• Phillips, Lela Bond. The Lena Baker Story. Atlanta: Wings Publishers, 2001.
• Woolner, Ann. "Condemned in a Day," Fulton County Daily Report, March 9, 1998.
• Woolner, Ann. "Lena Baker: Postscript," Fulton County Daily Report, March 16, 1998.

External links

• The Lena Baker Story, film website
• Lena Baker at Find a Grave