Deaths on March 5

Lena Baker, African American maid and murderer (b. 1900)

Lena Baker (June 8, 1900 – March 5, 1945) was an African American maid in Cuthbert, Georgia, United States, who was wrongfully 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 slaying and 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.