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Daily News
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A Tale of Southern Injustice
The saga of Lena Baker, the first and only woman executed in the state of Georgia, is finally coming to the big screen.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007 at 4:45 PM
By FilmStew Staff
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Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles
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Baker's 1945 mugshot
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Two years ago, the state of Georgia pardoned Lena Baker, an African-American maid sent to the electric chair on March 5th, 1945 for the fatal shooting of her 67-year-old white boss Ernest B. Knight. Baker, a mother of three who was having an intimate relationship with Knight, claimed self-defense and the details of her pardon fell in line with that version of events, suggesting that she should have only, at worst , been sentenced with manslaughter.
This week, a new $2.5 million feature film based on Baker’s life story, starring Tichina Arnold (Everybody Hates Chris, Martin) in the lead role, has begun shooting in Georgia. As the first and only woman executed by the state, her fate has been memorialized via an exhibit at Reidsville State Prison that features the electric chair once known as 'Old Sparky' and by a more recent 2001 book by Lela Bond Phillips, an English Professor at Andrew College in Cuthbert. Phillips first became aware of the Lena Baker saga while doing research in 1996 for another project.
Forgiving Injustice: The Lena Baker Story is based on a script adaptation by Phillips of the book and is being co-produced by Ralph Wilcox, founder of southwest Georgia's new Jokara-Micheaux Film Festival. It is also the first feature film production to be shot at a 22,000 square foot production facility in Colquitt affiliated with Wilcox’s now two-year-old Labor Day Weekend event.
Baker’s posthumous pardon, announced on August 30th, 2005, is only the fourth such decision ever granted by the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles. Her original trial lasted only four hours and was decided by a jury of twelve white men, many of whom knew each other socially.
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