Lynching of Julia and Frazier Baker

Lavinia Baker and her five surviving children after the lynching of her husband and baby on February 22, 1898. Left to right: Sarah; Lincoln, Lavina; Wille; Cora, Rosa

Frazer B. and Julia Baker were an African-American father and daughter who were lynched on February 22, 1898 in Lake City, Florence County, South Carolina.

Frazier Baker was appointed postmaster of Lake City in 1897, but local whites objected and undertook a campaign to force his removal. When these efforts failed to dislodge Baker a mob attacked his family, killing him and his daughter and wounding his wife and three other children. The incident and subsequent federal trial spurred national efforts to combat lynching.

Background

As part of the distribution of "spoils" after the 1896 Presidential election, the McKinley administration appointed hundreds of blacks to postmasterships across the Black Belt.[1] These recess appointments were resisted by local whites who resented any black officeholders, and feared that the increased political power that accompanied them would embolden black men to proposition white women.[1]

A 40-year-old schoolteacher, Frazier B. Baker, was appointed postmaster of Lake City, South Carolina in 1897 and immediately encountered fierce opposition from local whites.[2] While the surrounding Willamsburg county was 63% black, Lake City was, with fewer than a dozen black residents, overwhelmingly white.[3] A boycott of the Lake City post office was initiated, and petitions calling for Baker's dismissal were circulated.[2] One complaint was that Baker, a member of the Colored Farmers Alliance, had cut mail delivery from three times a day to just one after threats against his life were made.[3] A postal inspector arrived to investigate the complaints and recommended that the post office be closed; in response, a white mob burned it down with the expectation that no one would rent space to relocate it while Baker remained postmaster.[3] The government obtained space on the outskirts of town, however, and a lessening of racial tension led Baker to send for his family in February 1898.[3]

Threats against Baker's life were made as whites remained hostile to his presence, and Baker communicated these threats to his superiors in Washington.

Lynching

Victims[3][4]
Name Age Sex Injuries
Frazier Baker 42 M Killed by gunfire
Lavinia Baker F Gunshot to arm
Rosa Baker 18 F Arm broken by gunshot
Cora Baker 14 F Shot in right hand
Lincoln Baker 11 M Shot in abdomen/Broken arm
Sarah Baker 7 F Unharmed
Millie Baker 5 F Unharmed
Julia Baker 1 F Killed by gunfire

At 1:00 AM on February 21, 1898 the Baker family awoke to find their house (which also served as the post office) on fire.[3] Frazier Baker attempted to put out the fire without success, and sent his son, Lincoln, to find help. As soon as Lincoln opened the door he was met with gunfire, and Baker pulled him back into the house. Baker cursed the mob and began to pray. As the fire grew, the heat intensified, and Baker turned to his wife, Lavinia, saying that they, "might as well die running as standing still," and started for the door. Before he could open the door a bullet struck and killed his two-year-old daughter, Julia, as she was being held in Lavinia's arms. Baker, realizing that his youngest daughter had been killed, threw open the door and was cut down in a hail of gunfire.

Lavinia, wounded by the same bullet that had killed her daughter, rallied her family to escape the burning house by running across the road to hide under shrubbery in an adjacent field.[5] After waiting for the flames and gunfire to subside, Lavinia made her way to a neighbor's home and found one daughter waiting, and was later joined by the oldest, Rosa. Rosa had been shot through the right arm and fled the house with an unidentified armed white male in pursuit.[6] Only Sarah (age 7) and Millie (age 5) escaped unscathed. The survivors remained in Lake City for three days, but received no medical treatment.[3]

Aftermath

“The Mob at the Lake City Post Office--An Artist’s Portrayal,” reproduced from the Boston Post, 10 August 1899.

Reactions

Unusually, the lynching was met with widespread condemnation. The lynching was defended by those who agreed with South Carolina Senator Benjamin Tillman's appraisal of the "proud people" of Lake City's refusal to receive "their mail from a nigger."[3]

Ida B. Wells-Barnett denounced the lynching, and noted that the lynchers hadn't even bothered with the pretense of Baker having committed a crime.[7] At a mass protest in Chicago she mocked the lynchers as southerners "whose proud boast is their chivalry toward womanhood."[8] In order to present the resolutions passed at that meeting she met with President McKinley, arguing that Baker’s murder "was a federal matter, pure and simple. He died at his post of duty in defense of his country’s honor, as truly as did ever a soldier on the field of battle."[9] McKinley assured her that an investigation was underway. While in Washington she also urged Congress to provide support to the survivors, but attempts were unable to overcome southern opposition.[8]

While the lynching competed with the sinking of the USS Maine and the escalating tensions between the United States and Spain for the attention of the press, coverage of it was nevertheless widespread.[8] In South Carolina, white newspapers condemned the murder as "dastardly" and "revolting."[3] The Williamsburg County Record called the lynching "the darkest blot upon South Carolina's history," but that the McKinley administration was also to blame for "thrusting venal negro henchmen into Southern offices of trust."[8]

Investigation and trial

Lavinia Baker's testimony at trial

I was in the building, with the baby in my arms. [Frazier] saw that I could not move, and he grabbed me, saying, "Come on, we might as well die running as standing." At the door, the baby was shot: the baby was shot out of my arms. I said, "See, the baby's dead." Baker stepped back and saw his dead child; then he opened the door and was shot. I followed. Baker fell over and died, leaning against my lap.

Lavinia Baker, quoted in Fordham 2008

A grand jury was convened in Williamsburg County, but failed to return any indictments. The McKinley administration conducted a robust investigation of the murder, initially offering a $1,500 ($42,666 today) reward for the arrest and conviction of the mob.[3][10] Despite resistance to testifying, prosecutors indicted 7 men on the charge of murdering Baker on 1 July 1898.[11] Ultimately, thirteen men were indicted in U.S. Circuit Court charges of murder, conspiracy to commit murder, assault, and destruction of mail on 7 April 1899, after two men, Joseph P. Newham and Early P. Lee, turned state's evidence in exchange for their cases being dropped.[3][12]

The trial was held in federal court from 10–22 April 1899, and the list of accused was as follows:[13]

  • Alonza Rogers
  • Charles D. Joyner
  • Edwin Rogers
  • Ezra McKnight
  • Henry Goodwin
  • Henry Stokes
  • Marion Clark
  • Martin Ward
  • Moultrie Epps
  • Oscar Kelly
  • W. A. Webster

The all-white jury was composed of businessmen from across the state.[3] Newham, the prosecution's star witness, admitted to starting the fire and identified eight of the defendants as having participated in the murders. He expressed no remorse for the death of Baker and his daughter. Another witness, M. B. Springs, identified Henry Stokes as the ringleader; Springs was ostracized in Lake City and was ultimately placed under protection. An African-American witness, Henderson Williams, testified that he had seen armed white men at the post office on the night of the lynching; he was also retaliated against and fled to Florence after a white business partner threatened to "do [him] like they did Baker."[3]

The jury deliberated for around 24 hours before declaring a mistrial because the jury deadlocked five to five.[14] The case was never retried.

Following the mistrial, Lake City whites asked that the post office be reopened and mail service restored, an act that many African Americans derided as hypocritical.[3]

Baker family

On 2 May 1898, a mass meeting was held at the Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, which passed a resolution condemning the attack and took a collection of $16 for the Baker family.[15]

Lavinia Baker is treated by Dr. Alonzo McClennan at the Charleston Colored Hospital.

Lavinia Baker and her surviving children remained in Charleston for several months after the verdict. Lillian Clayton Jewett met with Dr. Alonzo C. McClennan, the Charleston physician chairing a committee charged with the Bakers' welfare, and arranged a meeting with Lavinia.[16] Lavinia agreed to accompany Jewett back to Boston, and she and her children, accompanied there by Jewett and Dr. Lucy Hughes Brown, a colleague of Dr. McClennan. Baker and Jewett had a falling out after several public appearances, with William Lloyd Garrison, Jr. spearheading fund-raising efforts to buy the Baker family a home near Boston.[17]

The Bakers remained in Boston, but out of public life.The surviving Baker children fell victim to a tuberculosis epidemic, with four children {William; Sarah; Lincoln, COra} dying from the disease 1908-1920.[18][19][20] [21] Her last child Rosa Baker [22] died 1942[23] Her children dead, Lavina Baker returned to Florence County, where she lived until her death in Cartersville, South Carolina in 1947.[16]

Lake City

In 1918, the St. James AME Church was constructed on the site of the burned post office. In 1955 the church was burned down by suspected white supremacists angry at its minister's (Reverend J. A. DeLaine) civil rights activism on behalf of the NAACP.[24] Racists had warned Delaine that he lived "where the black postmaster was shot to death many years ago."[25]

In 2003 the general assembly passed a resolution in favor of a South Carolina historical marker on the tragedy.[25][26] That marker was finally unveiled in October 2013 on South Church Street, the previous location of the post office and Baker's home.[27]

References

Notes
  1. 1 2 Williamson, Joel (1984). The Crucible of Race : Black-White Relations in the American South since Emancipation. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780198020493.
  2. 1 2 Dray 2007, 116.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Finnegan, Terence (2013). A Deed So Accursed: Lynching in Mississippi and South Carolina, 1881–1940. American South series. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. pp. 50–55. ISBN 978-0-8139-3385-6. Retrieved 21 May 2013.
  4. ↑ Tindall, George B. (1952). South Carolina Negroes: 1877 - 1900. Southern Classics. Univ of South Carolina Press. pp. 255–256. ISBN 978-1-57003-494-7. Retrieved 21 June 2013.
  5. ↑ Fordham 2008, p. 70.
  6. ↑ Fordham 2008, p. 72.
  7. ↑ Giddings, Paula J. (2009). Ida: A Sword Among Lions. New York: HarperCollins. pp. 386–387. ISBN 978-0-06-079736-2. Retrieved 21 May 2013.
  8. 1 2 3 4 Carter, David C. (2012-03-23). ‘No Painted Apache Ever Did Anything Half So Wanton, or Cannibal in Darkest Africa Ever Acted Upon a More Fiendish Impulse’: Newspaper Reactions to the 1898 Lynching of Postmaster Frazier Baker in Lake City, South Carolina on the Eve of the Spanish American War (PDF). Media & Civil Rights History Symposium. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina. Retrieved 2013-05-19.
  9. ↑ Dray 2009, 312.2.
  10. ↑ Consumer Price Index (estimate) 1800–. Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. Retrieved November 10, 2015.
  11. ↑ "CHARGED WITH MURDER.; Seven Men Held at Charleston for Alleged Killing of Postmaster Baker.". The New York Times. 1898-07-02. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2013-05-19.
  12. ↑ "THE LAKE CITY LYNCHING.; Thirteen Men Indicted in a Federal Court for the Alleged Murder of the Negro Postmaster.". The New York Times. 1899-04-08. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2013-05-19.
  13. ↑ Fordham 2008, p. 69.
  14. ↑ Fordham 2008, p. 73.
  15. ↑ Fordham 2008, p. 67.
  16. 1 2 Hux, Roger Kent (Winter 1991). "Lillian Clayton Jewett and the Rescue of the Baker Family, 1899-1900" (PDF). Historical Journal of Massachusetts 19 (1): 13–23. Retrieved 2013-06-21.
  17. ↑ Garrison, William Lloyd, Jr. (1899-09-23). "TO AID THE BAKER FAMILY.". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2013-05-19.
  18. ↑ Death Record of William Baker 1908
  19. ↑ Death Record of Sarah Baker 1909
  20. ↑ Death Record of Lincoln Baker 1916
  21. ↑ Death Record of Cora Baker 1920
  22. ↑ 1900 Census record of Rosa Baker
  23. ↑
  24. ↑ "S. C. Whites Burn Church to Chase Minister". Jet 8 (24). 1955-10-20. pp. 3–5.
  25. 1 2 Fordham 2008, p. 74.
  26. ↑ South Carolina Department of Archives and History (2009). "Florence County" (Database). South Carolina Historical Marker Program. Retrieved 2013-06-21.
  27. ↑ Brown, Tonya (2013-10-04). "Lake City honors postmaster lynched 115 years ago". CarolinaLive. Retrieved 2013-10-05.
Bibliography

External links

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