LENA BAKER - MARCH 5-1945

Murphy Browne © March 5-2019

LENA BAKER - MARCH 5-1945

On March 5-1945 Lena Baker became the first and only woman to be killed by the state of Georgia in the electric chair.  In 2005 she received a posthumous pardon from Georgia 60 years after she was killed in the electric chair.  Baker who maintained her innocence to the end said: “What I done, I did in self-defence or I would have been killed myself. Where I was, I could not overcome it. I am ready to meet my God.”

Baker had been repeatedly raped by the white man (23 years older than she was) who was killed with his own gun during a struggle as he tried to rape her again. She had been hiding from this man who had kept watch at her house overnight and grabbed her when she went home the following morning to take care of her three children who had been left in their grandmother’s care overnight.

It is a dreadful story illustrating the manner in which the lives of African Americans were constrained by white people. After dragging Baker over to a barn on his property where he raped her again, the white man went to a prayer meeting with his adult son, locking her in the barn.

When he returned from his prayer meeting and attempted to rape her at gunpoint there was a struggle during which he was killed. Baker was sentenced to death by a white all male jury after a four-hour trial. Although Baker was the victim in more ways than one, her family was forced to uproot their lives and flee their hometown. Her community was refused the right to bury her properly and mourn her passing. They were terrorized by the white community.

In 2001 Baker’s great nephew Roosevelt Curry began the campaign to clear her name. On August 30-2005 a full and unconditional pardon was granted to Lena Baker by the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles, 60 years after she was executed. The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles acknowledged that they had made "a grievous error" in the Lena Baker case 60 years before.

Murphy Browne © March 5-2019