John Ross

In 1945, Georgia executed Lena Baker, a 44-year-old Black mother of three, after a trial that lasted only a few hours. Baker had worked as a domestic worker and was caring for Ernest Knight, a white mill owner who had reportedly confined and abused her. On April 30, 1944, during a struggle over a pistol at the mill, Knight was shot and killed. Baker immediately went to the local coroner and told him what had happened, insisting that she had acted in self-defense. She was nevertheless convicted of capital murder by an all-white jury and sentenced to death. Her own final statement maintained that she acted because she believed she would be killed. Lena Baker was executed in Georgia's electric chair on March 5, 1945. For decades, her story received little public attention, and she was buried without a proper grave marker. Her family eventually fought to have the case reconsidered, and in 2005, sixty years after her execution, Georgia granted her a posthumous pardon. The state did not declare her innocent, but its Board of Pardons and Paroles acknowledged that denying her clemency had been a “grievous error” and that the case called for mercy. Today, Baker's name is remembered as part of the history of racial injustice, unequal justice and the Black women whose lives were often given little protection under Jim Crow.