Martin Baker

About

Martin Baker is a Republican politician and political consultant who came to infamy after attending a rally for Darren Wilson, the police officer who fatally shot Michael Brown. Online, photographs of Baker have been used in various image macros, including pictures of him talking on the phone and speaking at a podium.

History

Martin Baker was born in southeastern Missouri.^[1] He first ran for the U.S. House of Representatives in the 1st Congressional District of Missouri in 2012 and was defeated in the Republican primary, held August 7th, 2012, by Robyn Hamlin. He ran again in 2014 and was defeated by Daniel Elder in the Republican Primary held August 5th of that year.

Baker rose to infamy on August 17th, 2014, when he was photographed attending a rally in support of Darren Wilson, the police officer who fatally shot Mike Brown, causing a surge in Black Lives Matter protests. According to The Guardian, Baker was the only black person to attend the rally.^[4]

That day, threads appeared on black culture forums The Coli^[2] and Lipstick Alley,^[3] where users began posting jokes and images of Baker, which would later grow into memes.

Related Memes

Black Guy on the Phone

Black Guy on the Phone is the nickname Baker, who was photographed talking on his cell phone during an event to support police office Darren Wilson in August 2014. The photograph has been widely circulated in joke tweets posted on Black Twitter. On August 17th, 2014, The Guardian published an article about protesters in St. Louis, Missouri who came out in support of Darren Wilson, the police officer who fatally shot teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri earlier that month. The article referred to a man named Martin Baker as the sole black member of the crowd. The same day, a thread titled "Meet the one black man that showed up at the rally for the cop that killed Mike Brown" was submitted to the Lipstick Alley Forums, which highlighted a photograph of Baker holding a Darren Wilson T-shirt (shown below, left). In the thread, forum member originalwharris posted another photograph of Baker, in which he is shown holding his cellphone up to his ear (shown below, right).

On August 20th, several Twitter users posted the photograph of Baker with jokes about various types of phone calls he could be making (shown below).

Black Guy at the Podium

Baker is also the subject of a similar meme where he is seen standing at a podium. Jokes about what he is saying circulated online around the same time as Black Guy on the Phone memes (examples shown below).

Search Interest

External References