It is an adaptation of the book by Lela Bond Phillips, which chronicles the life and death of Lena Baker, an African-American woman in Georgia who was convicted in 1945 of capital murder and was the only woman to be executed by electric chair.

The film was written for the screen and directed by Ralph Wilcox and stars Tichina Arnold and Peter Coyote.

[1] The film chronicles the life of Lena Baker, born to a sharecropper family, who later worked as a maid in a small county town to support her three children.

Convicted in 1945 of capital murder by an all-white, male jury, Baker was the only woman in Georgia to be executed by the electric chair.

Baker acted in self-defense in the fatal shooting of her employer, Ernest Knight, during a struggle.