Thread by @NonHumanMedia1

The Lynching of Frazier and Julia Baker 🧵

On February 22, 1898, a white mob set fire onto the home of Frazier and Julia Baker while firing rounds into the house killing Frazier and their one year old daughter Julia

Lavinia and her five remaining children were able to escape

Background:
After the Civil War, many Black Americans were appointed postermaster often followed by a backlash by local whites

For example, Minnie Cox was the first Black American woman to be appointed postmaster in Mississippi in 1891 and was eventually forced to resign

Frazier Baker was a 40 year old schoolteacher, husband, and father of six when was appointed postermaster in Lake City, South Carolina, 1897

He immediately received complaints, was shot at twice, and white citizens would burn down their own post office to protest his appointment

The Baker's residence just outside Lake City was then converted into a post office

At 1:00 am February 22, 1898 the Baker family awoke to their home on fire surrounded by a white terrorist mob firing dozens of bullets into their home

Lavinia's recorded account of that night:

The lynching caused a national outrage that led to Ida Wells visiting McKinley's White House on March 22, 1898

She demanded the US punish the lynchers, pass anti-lynching legislation and give the family reparations citing how some Mexicans, Italians, and Chinese were compensated

McKinley and Congress never passed any anti-lynching legislation nor did the Baker's receive reparations

A trial was held in federal court but the all white jury was deadlocked 5-5 leading to a mistrial

The case was never retried and no one was ever punished

The Baker's moved to Boston in 1899

Sadly, all of Lavinia's surviving children would pass before her due to tuberculosis and one of a heart attack

In 1942, with all her kids gone, she returned to Florence County, South Carolina where she lived until her death in 1947

3 last things

1. Perhaps if the Baker's were compensated like those Italian cases ($25,000 in 1898 = over $700,000 today) they could have gone on to live more prosperous lives and maybe the children would have not all died early

2. This was not just a white supremacist terrorist attack on a Black American family but also a white supremacist terrorist attack against the U.S. itself

They killed a federal employee on federal property and yet their anti-black anti-American crimes went unpunished

3. There were many open white supremacist within the government that defended the lynching like the Senator from South Carolina Ben Tillman who said the "proud people" of Lake County refused to receive "their mail from a n****r"
#EndWhiteSupremacy