The Alabama State Tree is the Yellow Poplar.
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The Alabama State Bird is the Yellowhammer.
The Alabama State Electric Chair is Yellow Mama...
Black & White Mama :-)
Bob Lowry, sitting in the Alabama electric chair -- called "Yellow Mama" -- at Holman Prison in Atmore, Ala., while waiting to interview death row inmate John Evans,
who would be the first person executed in Alabama after the death penalty was reinstated.
Yellow Mama claims her first victim in AL
Yellow Mama claims her first victim in AL
Posted by Dave Tabler | April 8, 2009
“Some time between 1 o’clock and daybreak, Horace Devaughn will be led into the death chamber to pay the penalty for the murder of A.B. Moore and Mrs. Ruby Thornton in Birmingham last January,” reported The St. Petersburg Times on April 5, 1927. Three days later Devaughn, a black man, was executed at Kilby Prison, marking Alabama’s first use of the electric chair. Two weeks later, Virgil Murphy, a veteran of World War I who was convicted in Houston County of murdering his wife, became the first white man electrocuted in the chair.
In 1923, legislation had provided for state-performed executions to be carried out by electrocution. Prior to 1923, executions were the responsibility of the counties, and in Alabama, that generally meant hanging.
The electric chair was first used in 1890. The execution box consisted of a simple electrical panel with three buttons: an orange power button, a red stop button and a solemnly black execute button. The chair was subsequently used by more than 25 states throughout the 20th century, acquiring nicknames such as Sizzlin’ Sally, Old Smokey, Old Sparky, and Gruesome Gertie.
Alabamans referred to their electric chair as Yellow Mama; the chair acquired its yellow color from a contribution of highway line paint from the adjacent State Highway Department lab. It was built by a British inmate in 1927.
Yellow Mama now sits unused, inside the execution chamber at the Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Alabama. The last execution to occur in the chair was that of Lynda Lyon Block on May 10, 2002. Following her execution, a bill was passed that would allow for execution by either lethal injection or electrocution.
sources: www.patrickcrusade.org/YELLOW_MAMA_RETIRES.html
www.spiritus-temporis.com/yellow-mama/
Yellow Mama at Holman Prison death chambers
Yellow Mama at Holman Prison death chambers
On April 8, 1927, Horace DeVaughan, was the first person to be electrocuted in the "Yellow Mama" at the old walled Kilby Prison in Montgomery. Shortly thereafter on April 23, W. Virgil Murphy, was also electrocuted.
The story of the Yellow Mama is interesting. Edward Mason, a cabinetmaker from London, England, received a 12 to 60 year sentence for burglary and grand larceny in Mobile. Mason worked in the woodworking shop at Kilby making picture frames, cradles and baskets.
With several impending executions drawing nearer, the Board of Administration-Convict Department needed the means to carry out the capital sentences.
In November of 1926, Mason agreed to make the chair. He made a squat sturdy chair with flat armrests and an adjustable head rest from some maple wood and oak. It took Mason six days to finish the Yellow Mama.
As the story goes, Governor Graves gave Mason a month's furlough from prison for making the chair as had been previously agreed. Mason left and was never seen again. The chair and equipment was valued at $2,983.96.
The Yellow Mama is currently housed at the Holman Correctional Facility near Atmore Alabama. Lethal injection is also administered at Holman.
It typically cost approximately a gallon of gas to run the generator for testing the circuits and the actual execution. This in addition to overtime incurred by attending officers before, during, and after the execution.
For a list of those executed, please visit the Alabama Department of Corrections website.
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