The family of a black maid who killed in self defense and was convicted after a one day trial by an all white jury in the Segregated South in 1944 with no witnesses called on her behalf is seeking her exoneration.

Lena Baker claimed that she was being held against her will by a drunken white man and acted in self-defense when she wrested his gun away and shot him.

....Now relatives of the only woman executed in Georgia's electric chair are returning to Cuthbert to honor Baker and try to clear her name with the state Board of Pardons and.

"The family doesn't need to go down in history with a bad name," said Roosevelt Curry, 59, the grandson of Baker's brother.

...After she was sentenced, her attorney filed an appeal, but it was dropped after he withdrew from the case. She was executed in March 1945.

John Cole Vodika, director of the Prison and Jail Project, an inmate advocacy program, said the family has a strong case for getting her exonerated.

"She should never have been tried for murder," he said. "It was an obvious injustice. That's what the system did with African Americans who dared resist white men's authority.

"She was a victim of racism, white man's domination over African American women," he said. "In an effort to cover up what really happened, the county moved to treat it as capital murder. It sure appears they wanted to get rid of her quickly and to limit or eliminate anything happening that would further embarrass the family of the deceased."

Baker, who had a sixth-grade education, proclaimed her innocence to the very end. "What I done, I did in self-defense," she said in her final statement. "I have nothing against anyone.... I am ready to meet my God."

There will be a memorial service for Baker on May 11 at the Mount Vernon Baptist Church. Baker's grave is behind the church and she once sang in its choir.