Frazier and Julia Baker

Lavinia Baker and her five surviving children. Left to right: Sarah; Lincoln, Lavina; Wille; Cora, Rosa

Black History Month – February 22, 1898

Edited Reprint: Hill1News © 2019

There were some really foul people in the late 19th century. Those old time racist make today’s racist look like they carrying Walmart Tiki torches or something. Back in the day, if you were black then you was in constant danger!! Every tree was your enemy and every white woman was a walking coffin with yo name on it…

Almost fifty years after the Civil War, in a little racist town called Lake City, South Carolina, a black family was lynched. The president at the time was William B Mckinley. It was under his administration that Frazier Baker was appointed postmaster of Lake City. Normally this would be the end of the story, because we all know that appointing a black man to a government position in the first state to secede from the union and while Uncle Coot was still talking about the nig@r who shot him in the ass while his back was turned at Gettysburg… well we just know it’s going to end up with a dead black man… and you know something, you are right, a black man ends up dead. But this is a story that needs to be told… about a family thats needs to be remembered…

After the 1896 Presidential election, the Republican William McKinley administration appointed hundreds of blacks to postmasterships across the Black Belt during his remaining tenure, as part of patronage jobs to build local networks. These recess appointments were resisted by local whites, who resented any black Republican officeholders, and especially appointments made by an outgoing administration. They claimed to fear that the increased political power of black postmasters would embolden them to proposition white women. I know I joke a lot, but that’s the honest truth. Frazier, a married 40-year-old schoolteacher who was the father of six children, was appointed postmaster of Lake City, South Carolina in 1897. He immediately encountered fierce opposition from local white conservative Democrats. While the surrounding Williamsburg county was 63% black, Lake City was overwhelmingly white, with fewer than a dozen black residents,. Whites initiated a boycott of the Lake City post office, and circulated petitions calling for Baker’s dismissal.

One complaint was that Baker, a member of the Colored Farmers Alliance, had cut mail delivery from three times a day to one after threats against his life were made. They lucky, if it was me… pick yo mail up here. Anywho 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 for use as a post office while Baker remained postmaster. The government obtained space on the outskirts of town and a lessening of racial tension led Baker to send for his family in February 1898.

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. 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, who was held by Lavinia. Realizing that his youngest daughter had been killed, Baker 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, and they ran across the road to hide under shrubbery in an adjacent field. After waiting for the flames and gunfire to subside, Lavinia made her way to a neighbor’s home, where she found one daughter waiting. They were later joined by the oldest, Rosa. Rosa had been shot through the right arm and fled the house as an unidentified armed white male pursued her. Only Sarah (age 7) and Millie (age 5) escaped unscathed. The survivors remained in Lake City for three days, but received no medical treatment.[

The lynching was met with widespread condemnation, including across the South. The lynching was defended by those who agreed with South Carolina Senator Benjamin Tillman, who said the “proud people” of Lake City refused to receive “their mail from a nigger.” Journalist Ida B. Wells-Barnett denounced the lynching, and noted that the lynchers had not even pretended that Baker had committed a crime. 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.”[ McKinley assured her that an investigation was underway. 

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 ($45,174 today) reward for the arrest and conviction of members of the mob.[ Despite resistance by witnesses to testifying, on 1 July 1898 prosecutors indicted 7 men on the charge of murdering Baker. Ultimately, thirteen men were indicted in U.S. Circuit Court on 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 charges being dropped.

Just call me 6ix9ine…. The names of the racist responsible were:

  • 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. 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 police protection. Henderson Williams, an African-American witness, testified that he had seen armed white men at the post office on the night of the lynching. He was threatened and fled to Florence after a white business partner threatened to “do him like they did Baker.” The jury deliberated for around 24 hours before declaring a mistrial; the jury was deadlocked in reaching a verdict, five to five. The case was never retried.

Lavinia Baker and her five surviving children remained in Charleston for several months after the verdict and with the help of friends moved to Boston. 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. Lavinia’s last surviving child, Rosa Baker, died in 1942. Having lost all her children, Lavinia Baker returned to Florence County, where she lived until her death in Cartersville, South Carolina in 1947.

In 1918, the St. James AME Church was constructed on the site of Baker’s burned post office and house. In 1955 the church was burned down. Locals suspected arson by white supremacists angry at the activism of minister Joseph DeLaine during the Civil Rights Movement on behalf of the NAACP. Racists had warned Delaine that he lived “where the black postmaster was shot to death many years ago.” In 2003, the state General Assembly passed a resolution in favor of installing a South Carolina historical marker about the lynching and house fire. That marker was unveiled in October 2013 on South Church Street, the previous location of the post office and Baker’s home.

On September 6, 1901, President McKinley was shot by Leon Czolgosz. The president died six days later. Czolgosz was executed forty five days after the president’s death. His last words were, “I killed the President because he was an enemy of the good people.” Oh yeah?, We know all about the “good people.” After they fried his ass in that homemade electric chair, they poured sulfuric acid in his coffin, so that his body would be completely disfigured. His clothes and possessions were then incinerated so that there would be nothing left of his miserable life.

In Memory of the Baker Family. Rest In Peace.

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