Educational purpose only. This post documents historical practices related to executions and aims to educate about historical procedures. We do not glorify violence or hate.
Lena Baker was born on June 8, 1900 (some records list 1901), near Cuthbert in Randolph County, Georgia, into a poor African American family of sharecroppers. She grew up in hardship in the Jim Crow South, worked as a maid and cotton chopper to support herself and her three children, and lived a life marked by poverty and limited options.
In the early 1940s, Baker was hired to care for Ernest B. “E.B.” Knight, a white gristmill owner in his sixties who had broken his leg. What began as employment quickly became captivity. According to Baker’s consistent testimony, Knight repeatedly held her against her will at the mill for days at a time, sexually assaulted her, threatened her with a pistol, and kept her in conditions later described as near-slavery. Local residents and Knight’s own son knew of the arrangement and disliked it; the son once beat Baker severely in an attempt to end it.
On the night of April 29–30, 1944, Knight forced Baker from her home to the gristmill. An argument erupted. Knight threatened her with an iron bar. In the struggle that followed, they tussled over his pistol. The gun fired, killing Knight with a shot to the head. Baker immediately reported the incident to the county coroner (who had previously employed her) and stated that she had acted in self-defense, believing she would have been killed otherwise.
She was charged with capital murder. On August 14, 1944, she stood trial in the Randolph County Courthouse before Judge William “Two Gun” Worrill, who kept a pair of pistols visible on the bench. The jury was all-white and all-male—standard under Georgia’s disenfranchisement practices that barred Black citizens from jury service. The entire proceeding, from jury selection through verdict, lasted only a few hours (accounts commonly cite four hours total, with deliberation of about 20–30 minutes). No defense witnesses were called. Baker’s court-appointed attorney later withdrew from the case after filing a minimal appeal, leaving her without effective counsel. The jury rejected her self-defense claim and convicted her of capital murder, which carried an automatic death sentence.
Governor Ellis Arnall granted a 60-day reprieve so the Board of Pardons and Paroles could review the case. In January 1945 the board denied clemency. Baker was transferred to Georgia State Prison in Reidsville on February 23, 1945. On the morning of March 5, 1945, she was executed in the electric chair known as “Old Sparky.” She went calmly, maintaining her innocence to the end. Her final words included: “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 am ready to meet my God.” She was pronounced dead after several shocks lasting about six minutes. She was 44 years old and remains the only woman ever executed by electrocution in Georgia. A local paper reported the event under the headline “Baker Burns.” She was buried in an unmarked grave near Mt. Vernon Missionary Baptist Church in Randolph County; a simple headstone was later placed by church members.
Sixty years later, in August 2005, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles granted Lena Baker a full and unconditional posthumous pardon—the second in the state’s history at the time. The board did not declare her factually innocent but stated that the 1945 denial of clemency had been “a grievous error” and that the case “called out for mercy.” It noted she could properly have been charged with voluntary manslaughter (average sentence around 15 years) rather than capital murder. The pardon was presented to her descendants, including grandnephew Roosevelt Curry, who had led the effort with support from advocates and author Lela Bond Phillips (whose 2001 biography The Lena Baker Story later inspired a 2008 film).
Baker’s case stands as a stark illustration of racial and gender injustice under Jim Crow: a Black woman, mother of three, held captive and abused by a white employer, tried in a rushed proceeding by an all-white male jury without meaningful defense, and executed despite clear claims of self-defense. Her story, long nearly forgotten in her own community, has been recovered through historical research, family advocacy, and public remembrance. It continues to educate about the failures of due process, the racial disparities in capital punishment in mid-20th-century Georgia, and the long struggle for posthumous justice.
Sources drawn from historical records and accounts including the New Georgia Encyclopedia, contemporary reporting, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles decision, and documented trial and execution details.