Lena Baker (Georgia Encyclopedia.org)
The only woman ever to die in Georgia's electric chair - a victim of racial injustice in the Jim Crow-era South - is the focus of a movie that makes its world premiere this month at the 32nd annual Atlanta Film Festival.
"This is one I had to do first," said veteran actor Ralph Wilcox, 57, who wrote and directed "The Lena Baker Story" and produced it at a new 22,000 square-foot movie studio in rural southwestern Georgia.
"This film ... dealt with four issues that are really continuing today - abuse, addiction, the death penalty and the fourth and foremost is our faith," Wilcox said. "It was her faith that gave Lena her courage and fortitude."The film is one of more-than 150 movies, documentaries and animations selected from some 1,600 submissions to be featured at the festival, which runs April 10-19 at Atlanta's Landmark Midtown Art Cinema, said festival executive director Gabriel Wardell.
"One of the reasons we choose it for opening night is that it is such an accomplished film, especially for a first-time director," said Wardell. "It's elegantly shot. It really captures the period, but also the beautiful landscape in southwest Georgia - cotton fields and sunsets. And it also has top-notch performances from a remarkable cast, especially Tichina Arnold in the lead role."Arnold is cast in the role of Baker, a black housekeeper in Cuthbert who became romantically involved with an abusive, pistol-toting, gristmill operator, who was white. Baker and the miller, played by actor Peter Coyote, are portrayed as drunks, mired in an interracial relationship that was taboo in the segregated South.
Tichina Arnold
Others featured in the film are Beverly Todd as Baker's mother, Michael Rooker as the sheriff who arrested Baker and Chris Burns, the miller's son. All three urged Baker to break off the relationship with her hateful lover.
At her trial, Baker, a mother of three, said the miller held her against her will during a drinking binge and that she shot him with his own pistol after he grabbed an iron bar and threatened to hit her.
The jury of 12 white men didn't buy her self-defense argument. During the one-day trial on Aug. 14, 1944, her court-appointed lawyer didn't call a single defense witness.
The jury found her guilty of first-degree murder and a white judge sentenced her to die.
Her attorney filed an appeal, but withdrew from the case, leaving the appeal to be dismissed.
Baker's final words, shortly before her execution at the Reidsville State Penitentiary on March 5, 1945, were, "What I done, I did in self-defense. I have nothing against anyone ... I am ready to meet my God."
An undertaker buried her body behind the small country church near Cuthbert, where she had attended services and was a choir member. Her grave remained unmarked for more than five decades, until the congregation raised $250 for a cement slab.
For decades, Lena Baker was buried in an unmarked grave behind Mt Vernon Baptist Church, outside of Cuthbert, Ga. A simple headstone now designates her final resting place. (Muthoni Muturi, NPR)
At the request of Baker's family, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles granted her a pardon in 2005. The board did not find her innocent of the crime, but instead found that the decision to deny her clemency in 1945 was a grievous error.
Wilcox, who is black and spent more than six years in Africa producing documentaries on the work of missionaries, said he hopes the movie will give young people a better understanding of history and help them make responsible decisions in a world where atrocities and disasters still occur.
"I didn't want to vilify anyone ... or the system that was bad," said the Milwaukee-born filmmaker. "There are the villains, but also the saviors, black and white. It is a lesson in the evolution of how we go trough tyranny and struggle. It tells a story about a chapter in our history from which we can evolve."Upon his return from Africa, Wilcox said he had a dream of making movies in rural Georgia. He eventually found a home in Colquitt, about 180 miles southwest of Atlanta, which already had a thriving arts council famous for its folk play, "Swamp Gravy," a Cultural Olympiad Event during the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.
With grants and donations, he built a multi-million-dollar movie studio in a former cotton patch, and like the arts council, hopes to use filmmaking as a vehicle for economic development in a rural area that has struggled to attract traditional industries.
The Lena Baker movie will be in distribution by the end of the year, Wilcox said.
