Tichina Arnold is synonymous with strong comedy roles, most notably on WBNX sitcoms Martin, One on One, and now Everybody Hates Chris, where she plays feisty mom “Rochelle.”  But that could easily change after her compelling drama, The Lena Baker Story, sold out its world premiere Thursday night at the Atlanta Film Festival.  Those who’ve screened the true story have left in tears, Tichina said recently, and fans are already stirring the buzz for a potential Academy Award nomination.  The biopic recounts the life of the first and only woman to die in the Georgia electric chair.  During the mid-1940s segregated South, Lena Baker was held captive by an abusive Caucasian employer—whom she shot and killed in her struggle to escape.  The jury of 12 white men quickly found her guilty of murder, a conviction posthumously overturned some 60 years later.  It’s fitting that the film debuted in the same week we observe the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination.  Tichina’s powerful performance puts a face on the type of civil rights injustice that many Americans endured for decades and that King fought so hard to correct.

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