Lynching of Frazier B. Baker and Julia Baker

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."[3]

Journalist Ida B. Wells-Barnett denounced the lynching and noted that the lynchers had not even pretended that Baker had committed a crime, as mobs often did.[8] At a mass protest in Chicago, she mocked the lynchers as southerners "whose proud boast is their chivalry toward womanhood."[9] 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."[10] McKinley assured her that an investigation was underway. While in Washington, Wells-Barnett also urged Congress to provide support to the survivors. Legislators could not overcome the opposition of the Democrats and nearly Solid South block to authorize such support.[9]

While the lynching of the Bakers had to compete 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 widespread.[9] 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." It said the McKinley administration was also to blame for "thrusting venal negro henchmen into Southern offices of trust."[9]

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 ($52,764 today) reward for the arrest and conviction of members of the mob.[3][11] Despite resistance by witnesses to testifying, on 1 July 1898 prosecutors indicted 7 men on the charge of murdering Baker.[12] 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.[3][13]

The trial was held in federal court from 10–22 April 1899, and the list of defendants was as follows:[14]

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 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."[3]

The jury deliberated for around 24 hours before declaring a mistrial; the jury was deadlocked in reaching a verdict, five to five .[15] The case was never retried.

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

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

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. The congregation collected $16 ($460.61 today using the same multiplier as above) for the Baker family.[16]

Lavinia Baker and her five 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.[17] Lavinia agreed to accompany Jewett back to Boston, and she and her children were 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, as William Lloyd Garrison, Jr. led fund-raising efforts in order to buy a home for the Baker family near Boston.[18]

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.[19][20][21][22] Lavinia's last surviving child, Rosa Baker,[23] died in 1942.[24] Having lost all her children, Lavinia Baker returned to Florence County, where she lived until her death in Cartersville, South Carolina in 1947.[17]

In 1918, the St. James AME Church was constructed on the site of Baker's burned post office and house. On October 5, 1955, the church was burned down.[25] Locals suspected arson by white supremacists angry at the activism of minister Joseph DeLaine during the Civil Rights Movement on behalf of the NAACP.[26] Racists had warned DeLaine that he lived "where the black postmaster was shot to death many years ago."[27]

In 2003, the state General Assembly passed a resolution in favor of installing a South Carolina historical marker about the lynching and house fire.[27][28] That marker was unveiled in October 2013 on South Church Street, the previous location of the post office and Baker's home.[29]