Lena Baker (June 8, 1900 – March 5, 1945)[1] was an African American maid in Cuthbert, Georgia, United States, who was convicted of capital murder of a white man, Ernest Knight.

[3][2] The execution came during a decades-long period of state suppression of civil rights of black citizens in white-dominated Georgia.

The state had disenfranchised black people since the turn of the century, and imposed legal racial segregation and second-class status on them.

At the time of the trial, a local newspaper reported that Baker was held as a "slave woman" by Knight, and that she shot him in self-defense during a struggle.

In 1944, Baker started working for Ernest Knight, an older white man who had broken his leg.

The trial was presided over by Judge William "Two Gun" Worrill, who kept a pair of pistols in view on his judicial bench.

The town disliked their sexual relationship and the county sheriff had warned her to stay away from Knight, or risk being sent to jail.

The all-white, all-male jury rejected Baker's plea of self-defense and convicted her of capital murder by the end of the first day of the trial.

In addition to the legal racial segregation imposed by the white-dominated Georgia legislature, it had disenfranchised most black people since the turn of the century, which disqualified them from jury service.

[2][6][5] Commentators have suggested that in 1945, the Board of Pardons and Parole could have lowered her charge to voluntary manslaughter, which would have carried an average 15-year sentence and saved her life.

[2][8] In 2001, Lela Bond Phillips, a professor at Andrew College, published a biography titled The Lena Baker Story, which was adapted into a feature film of the same name in 2008.