"Henry Baker was a very good friend to Tuskegee Institute and also to Booker T. Washington. For twenty years that I know of--and he had done it much longer--he gave Tuskegee Institute his first bale of cotton." Henry Baker was one of the few local black farmers who did not rent, but owned his property. He and his wife Sally were able to increase their crop output with the assistance of George Washington Carver and gained much from the lessons on crop rotation Carver taught during the monthly Farmer's Institutes. One interviewer noted Polk said Baker "was also known for entering classes unannounced to speak about his views of life. Of the people from the area whom Polk photographed, Baker 'was the only one of the folks I really knew.' "