In
1996 while doing some research about 1940s Cuthbert, Georgia,
I ran across some information about Lena Baker. At that time,
the ordeal and execution of Lena Baker was one of the best
kept secrets in town. After reading the Superior Court Minutes
of her trial, I knew that Lena needed a voice. Almost sixty
years after her tragic death, I knew her story cried out to
be told and I was going to tell it.
Lena
Baker had a least four strikes against her when she was born
at the turn of the century in Randolph County, Georgia. She
was from a small, rural southern town; she was a woman; she
was poor; and she was black. Lena was born in a former slave
cabin, about five miles southwest of Cuthbert. At the age
of forty-four in 1944, Lena had never known anything except
hard work and the pangs of poverty and despair. She chopped
cotton, cleaned houses, and took in laundry to help support
her mother and her three children.
When
Ernest B. Knight, a local gristmill owner, hired her to care
for him while he recovered from a broken leg, it must have,
at first, seemed like a windfall. Knight, a white man, was
twenty-three years Baker's senior. It was well known in Cuthbert
that Knight was heavy drinker and that he often carried a
pistol strapped to his shoulder. It wasn't long before a sexual
relationship developed between Knight and Baker. When she
attempted to extricate herself from this relationship, Knight
locked her in his gristmill for several days at a time, and
as a nearby newspaper reported after her execution, kept her
there as his "slave woman."
At
her trial, Lena explained how Knight approached her house
and forced her to go with him on that Saturday evening of
April 29. Baker 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 once
even Knight's son had given her a terrible beating with a
warning to stay away from his father). Therefore, as soon
as she could, Baker gave Knight the slip and spent the night
sleeping in the woods near the convict camp. On her way back
into Cuthbert the next morning, Knight cornered her again
and this time took her to the mill house and locked her in
while he went to a "singing" (a form of religious
celebration in the South) with his son. Lena soon became fed
up with spending the sweltering day lying on an old bed in
the gristmill. When Knight returned, she informed him that
she was leaving. They, in Lena's words "tussled over
the pistol."
At
her trial when asked who pulled the trigger, she replied,
"I don't know." She also explained the Knight was
brandishing an iron bar that was used to secure the door to
the gristmill and that she was afraid for her life.
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.
Lena
went to her death calmly. Her last words were, "What
I done, I did in self-defense, or I would have been killed
myself ... I am ready to meet my God." Witnesses stated
that it took six minutes and several shocks before the prison
doctor pronounced her dead. Although Ernest B. Knight's death
had not made the headlines in the Cuthbert Times, Lena's
did. The paper crassly reported, "Baker Burns."
In
1998, the congregation of the church Lena attended as a young
woman raised $250 for a slab and marker for her grave. Her
relatives, now scattered from New Jersey to Florida, met this
year, the 58th anniversary of her death, to place a wreath
on her grave. They are beginning to reconnect and plan a reunion
on Mothers Day, May 11. They have asked the state Pardons
and Parole Board to clear her of the crime. Perhaps if this
happens, a healing process can begin. The only response thus
far from the Board is that it usually does not grant pardons
of this kind.
Author
Lela Bond Phillips is an English professor at Andrew College
in Cuthbert, Georgia. The Lena Baker Story, Wings
Press, is available on amazon.com.
