Ericka Benedicto, writing for Black Past detailed the horror in “Lynching of Julia and Frazier Baker (1898)”:
On February 22, 1898, Lavinia awakened around 1:00 a.m. to discover that their home—which also functioned as the post office—had been set ablaze by a mob of whites. Lavinia quickly alerted Baker, who immediately tried to extinguish the fire. Lavinia then grabbed their youngest child, two-year-old Julia, into her arms and gathered the other five children.
Desperate to shepherd his family away from danger, Baker opened the front door but gunshots struck him in the head and body killing him as he fell backward into the blazing building. Lavinia was also shot as she fled. She was struck in the forearm, which caused her to drop Julia. The bullet that hit Lavinia also fatally shot Julia. Both Baker and his baby daughter Julia lay dead on the floor while flames consumed their bodies.
Lavinia and her surviving children escaped to a neighbor’s house. There she saw the critical gunshot wounds of three of her children. Remarkably, two of her children were physically unharmed.
The Equal Justice Initiative reported on the injustice that followed.
Mr. Frazier and Julia’s remains were burned beyond recognition—the local white newspaper insensitively reported that they had been “cremated in the flames.” The federal post office building and all of its equipment were consumed by the fire, and the citizens of Lake City were left without a post office.
Members of the Black community held a mass meeting at Pilgrim Baptist Church and drafted a public statement expressing outrage about the lynching. The murder prompted a national campaign of letter-writing, activism, and advocacy spearheaded by Ida B. Wells and others, which ultimately persuaded President McKinley to order a federal investigation that resulted in the prosecution of 11 white men implicated in the Baker lynching. Despite ample evidence, an all-white jury refused to convict any of the defendants.
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