Claude Morehead Went to Electric Chair Singing and Praying, Nov. 30, 1921

Woman at the Electrocution. . . Warden Wanted Her to Sign Death Certificate But She Politely Declined

Raleigh, Nov. 30—For the first time in the history of electrocutions in North Carolina a woman, who refused to give her name to reporters and prison officials, witnessed an electrocution this morning when Claude Morehead, negro wife murder of Guilford county, went singing and praying to his death. The young woman was pretty and stylishly dressed and came to the electrocution with friends who guarded her name with the same care that she did.

Warden Busbee tried to get her name when he asked her to sign the death warrant, thereby adding another new chapter in the history of electrocutions, but she refused to fall in with the suggestion of the warden, and declined to sign the paper testifying that Claude Morehead had died legally and according to the statutes prescribed for such crimes as the ne with which he was charged and found guilty.

The woman was passing through Raleigh. It is said she was a native of New York state and that this was the seventh execution she has witnessed. One of these was in the famous Sing Sing prison of New York state. Consequently, those who looked for unusual emotion of feminine display of temperament when the negro walked into the death house and sat down in the chair were disappointed. For she displayed no apparent emotion—no more than the others who were witnessing an electrocution for the first time, and not as much as some of those who have seen several, for one of the strange things about electrocutions is that the more one sees the more the spectacle horrifies, and appalls. At least it affects some of the old timers that way.

Went Singing and Praying

Claude Morehead went to his death singing and praying.

“The Lord have mercy on me, the Lord have mercy on my soul,” he prayed as he walked from the cell on death row into the death chamber.

He started a humming intonation that may have been a prayer or may have been a song as he entered the death chamber. This humming continued as he sat down in the chair and the attendants strapped the body. It did not stop even when the helmet was fitted down over his head, and even when the face strap was placed over mouth and nose the humming, droning prayer or song continued, stopping only when the first shock sent the negro’s body heaving and straining against the taut leather straps.

Morehead killed his wife in a drunken moment after he and his wife had been to a celebration at the “Bull Pen” in Guilford county, where according to the evidence there was much drunkenness. Returning to their home after the day’s festivities and celebration Morehead accused his wife of something which she denied. This enraged the drunken negro, and he slapped his wife in the face and then hit her on the head with a chair. The woman ran into the house, but her husband followed her and choked her.

Some negro, attracted by the disturbance, went in and pulled Morehead away from his wife. Thinking that he had stopped the fight, he went home, but the negro was not content with the punishment inflicted. Returning to the attack Morehead dragged his wife off the bed and beat her to death, while people on the outside, afraid to enter, watched the murder through the window. Morehead appealed to the Supreme court, but the appeal was never perfected. The case was laid before the governor in an appeal for clemency through commutation, but the governor did not grant the commutation.

From the front page of The Mount Airy News, Dec. 8, 1921