Lena Baker

Lena Baker (June 8, 1900 – March 5, 1945) was an African American maid in Cuthbert, Georgia, United States, who was convicted of capital murder of a white man, Ernest Knight. She was executed by the state of Georgia in 1945. Baker was the only woman in Georgia to be executed by electrocution.

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 2005, sixty years after her execution, the state of Georgia granted Baker a full and unconditional pardon. A biography was published about Baker in 2001, and it was adapted for the feature film The Lena Baker Story (2008), chronicling the events of her life, trial, and execution.