In the 1900s,racial injustice and racial hate was around the world everywhere. We learn of the stories of African American Heroes such as Rosa Parks,Martin Luther King Jr.,Malcom X and etc. about how they went through those trials. However,before Martin Luther King Jr.and Rosa Parks,there was an African American woman who faced a much more crucial form of racial injustice. Her name was Lena Baker and on March 5,1945 she became the first and only woman to be executed by electrocution on Georgia.
First,let me give you a little history on Lena Baker: Lena was born on June 8,1901 near Cuthbert,Georgia. As a child Baker and her family worked for a farmer named J. A. Cox chopping cotton. They were not paid well and even working in a laundry, the family was poor.
At the age of 20, Lena and her bestfriend found they could make money by "entertaining gentlemen" by running a sex house. This came to attention of the Randolph County sheriff as their clientelle were white and interracial relationships were illegal in Georgia. They were were arrested and had to spend several months in a workhouse. On release,Lena was ostracized by the black community, leading her to become an alcoholic.
In 1941, Baker was hired by Knight to care for him after a fall broke his leg. In the town of Cuthbert, Georgia, Knight was viewed as brutal and abusive. He was a failed farmer who ran a gristmill and known for always having a pistol strapped to his chest. A relationship developed between the two. Knight would provide Baker with alcohol in return for sex, and the whole town knew of it. Knight was persuaded by his oldest son to move to Tallahassee, Florida in an effort to break up the pair, but Baker came with him. Knight's son ,Eugene, then gave Baker an ultimatum to leave. She left, but Knight followed her back to Cuthbert.
On the night of April 30, 1944 Lena Baker went to the house of J.A. Cox, who was now the town coroner and told him that she had shot Knight. Cox told Baker to go to the sheriff, while he would go to gristmill where Baker said Knight's body was. Baker did not go to the sheriff, but instead went home. She was picked up by the sheriff later that night, but was cooperative. He gave her two days to sleep off the affects of the alcohol in her system.
At her trial,Baker told her story of how she had been warned by the county sheriff to stay away from Knight or that she was going to be thrown in jail; too, she was afraid of physical abuse by Knight and she once was given a brutal beating by Eugene Knight with a warning to stay away from his father. However,Knight had come to her house drunk and asked her to come to the mill. She did not want to, but knew better than to refuse the drunk man. She tried stalling him by asking for money to go buy some whiskey. He gave her some money and she went to the tavern but found it closed. She waited there for a while hoping that Knight would leave her house. She returned but found he was still there. She was forced to accompany him to the mill, but escaped and hid in some bushes. She bought some whiskey and went to sleep at the nearby convict camp. On waking the next morning she decided to go to the mill and she was sure this was the last place that Knight would go. However,that was exactly where Knight was.
He held her prisoner for several hours, even though several hours of his absence. He returned and told Baker he would kill her before she would ever leave again. A struggle ensued, with Baker being the only living witness the details of what happened are sketchy at best but Baker managed to get hold of Knight's pistol, which went off, hitting him in the head, instantly killing him.
Under the jurisdiction of Judge Charles William "Two Gun" Worrill, who presided at court with two pistols on the bench, the trial didn't last even a full court day, taking a little over four hours. A former "lawman" out West, Worrill boasted of gunfights with twelve men, seven of whom died. Later he was appointed to the Georgia State Supreme Court by Governor Herman Talmadge, who later became a vehemently segregationist senator. The jury consisted of twelve white men (not unusual for 1944), but many of the jurors were good friends who attended the same small churches, socialized with each other's families at card parties, and shared morning coffee at a local cafe.
In less than one-half hour the jury came back with a guilty verdict and Worrill sentenced Baker to death in Georgia's electric chair, nicknamed "Old Sparky." Her lawyer immediately asked for a new trial to be scheduled because "the verdict was contrary to the evidence and without evidence to support it ... and the verdict was contrary to law and the principles of justice and equity." He then just as immediately resigned as her lawyer. Later,Lena was granted a sixty-day reprieve by then Governor Arnall, but the Board of Pardons and Parole denied clemency when they heard the case. Lena's execution date was scheduled for March 5, 1945. On February 23 she was signed into one of the worst prisons in the United States, Reidsville State Prison, where she was housed in the men's section until just a few days before her execution when she was moved to a solitary cell just a few feet from the execution chamber itself.
On March 5,1945, Lena Baker calmly went to be executed. Her last words were “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."
