The Lena Baker Story

Rating:
Summary: The Lena Baker Story: A Review
Review: (The following review is taken from The Eufaula Tribune, Joel P. Smith, Triibune publisher) The Lena Baker Story, the story of the first and only woman to be executed in Georgia, is almost as fascinating as Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. The plot centers on Lena Baker, 44, who had never known anything but the pangs of poverty, and gristmill owner Ernest B. Knight, a white man 23 years the African-American Baker's senior. They had carried on a love-hate relationship for some three years --"The kind that usually ends in one of the parties being harmed." It began when Lena was hired to care for the mill owner while he recovered from a broken leg.The trashy affair isn't exploited, but it dramatically raises the question, was justice served even though the slave woman-locked in his gristmill and not allowed to go home -- confessed to killing him?....I found the well-researched true story to be a page-turner....The book is divided into three parts: Lena's life, the trial and the execution. If the story line doesn't have appeal, the life and times of the shooter and the gristmill owner do. It's a delightful, graphic depiction of this bygone era, encompassing politics in Georgia, including neighboring Quitman County. Georgia's own gubernatorial debacle is included, when Ellis Arnall and Herman Talmadge both claimed to be governor, sitting 20 feet from each other in the executive suite, carrying on the business of Georgia....Much history and life of the times are skillfully incoorporated into the book, such as the founding of Andrew College in 1854 to bring prospective wives to Cuthbert for the young men attending a local Baptist academy. There's the tale about the old woman who took her cats in a croaker sack with her when she went downtown to shop foor groceries. then Mrs. Luci Moye made a daily trip in the late afternoon to Eufaula to buy her pet parrot, Polly, a cherry Coke, following her "racous litany of 'Polly want a cherry Coke.'" The story doesn't have a happy ending, though. The Cuthbert Times, a local newspaper I bought years later and edited, crassly reported on her death on page one: "Baker Burns."

Rating:
Summary: The Lena Baker Story: A Review
Review: The story of Lena Baker, the first and only woman to be executed legally in the state of Georgia, needed to be told.
Lena was an impoverished Black woman who lived in Cuthbert, the seat of Randolph County, in southwest Georgia. She lost control of her life because, in addition to her station, of two facts. A prominent white man insisted she be his mistress, and she was dependent on alcohol.
When she killed her oppressor in self-defense, she was tried for murder. Did she receive a fair trial? Was her case given an adequate investigation? Was she assigned a competent defense attorney?
The exploration of these questions makes Phillips's The Lena Baker Story an absorbing one, but even more engaging are the minute details the reader learns of small-town, Southern life in the 1940s. We are told what is playing at the movies. We know that one Cuthbert resident drove all the way to Eufala, Alabama, to buy her pet bird cherry cokes. We know what most folks had for dinner.
This book is highly recommended for its general appeal and to any student of the history of jurisprudence, of the civil rights of Blacks and women, of Americana, or of Georgia history.

Rating:
Summary: Lena's Story Needed to Be Told
Review: The story of Lena Baker, the first and only woman to be executed legally in the state of Georgia, needed to be told.
Lena was an impoverished Black woman who lived in Cuthbert, the seat of Randolph County, in southwest Georgia. She lost control of her life because, in addition to her station, of two facts. A prominent white man insisted she be his mistress, and she was dependent on alcohol.
When she killed her oppressor in self-defense, she was tried for murder. Did she receive a fair trial? Was her case given an adequate investigation? Was she assigned a competent defense attorney?
The exploration of these questions makes Phillips's The Lena Baker Story an absorbing one, but even more engaging are the minute details the reader learns of small-town, Southern life in the 1940s. We are told what is playing at the movies. We know that one Cuthbert resident drove all the way to Eufala, Alabama, to buy her pet bird cherry cokes. We know what most folks had for dinner.
This book is highly recommended for its general appeal and to any student of the history of jurisprudence, of the civil rights of Blacks and women, of Americana, or of Georgia history.