Mississippi State Penitentiary (MSP), also known as Parchman Farm, is a maximum-security

prison farm A prison farm (also known as a penal farm) is a large correctional facility where penal labor convicts are forced to work on a farm legally and illegally (in the wide sense of a productive unit), usually for manual labor, largely in the open ai ...

located in

unincorporated Unincorporated may refer to: * Unincorporated area, land not governed by a local municipality * Unincorporated entity, a type of organization * Unincorporated territories of the United States, territories under U.S. jurisdiction, to which Congress ...

Sunflower County Sunflower County is a county located in the U.S. state of Mississippi. As of the 2010 census, the population was 29,450. Its largest city and county seat is Indianola. Sunflower County comprises the Indianola, MS Micropolitan Statistical Are ...

Mississippi Mississippi () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States, bordered to the north by Tennessee; to the east by Alabama; to the south by the Gulf of Mexico; to the southwest by Louisiana; and to the northwest by Arkansas. Miss ...

, in the Mississippi Delta region. Occupying about of land,"State Prisons"
.

Mississippi Department of Corrections The Mississippi Department of Corrections (MDOC) is a state agency of Mississippi that operates prisons. It has its headquarters in Jackson. Burl Cain is the commissioner. History In 1843 a penitentiary in four city squares in central Jackson ...

. Retrieved January 14, 2011."MDOC Quick Reference"
Mississippi Department of Corrections. Retrieved May 21, 2010. Parchman is the only maximum security prison for men in the state of

, and is the state's oldest prison. Begun with four stockades in 1901, the

facility was constructed largely by state prisoners. It has beds for 4,840

inmate A prisoner (also known as an inmate or detainee) is a person who is deprived of liberty against their will. This can be by confinement, captivity, or forcible restraint. The term applies particularly to serving a prison sentence in a prison. ...

s. Inmates work on the prison farm and in manufacturing workshops. It holds male offenders classified at all custody levels—A and B custody (minimum and medium security) and C and D custody (maximum security). It also houses the male death row—all male offenders sentenced to death in Mississippi are held in MSP's Unit 29—and the state

execution chamber An execution chamber, or death chamber, is a room or chamber in which capital punishment is carried out. Execution chambers are almost always inside the walls of a maximum-security prison, although not always at the same prison where the death r ...

. The superintendent of Mississippi State Penitentiary is Marshall Turner. There are two wardens, three deputy wardens, and two associate wardens. Female prisoners are not usually assigned to MSP;

Central Mississippi Correctional Facility The Central Mississippi Correctional Facility for Women (CMCF) is a Mississippi Department of Corrections (MDOC) prison for men and women located in an unincorporated area in Rankin County, Mississippi, near the city of Pearl.

History

For much of the 19th century after the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states ...

, the state of Mississippi used a

convict lease Convict leasing was a system of forced penal labor which was practiced historically in the Southern United States, the laborers being mainly African-American men; it was ended during the 20th century. (Convict labor in general continues; f ...

system for its prisoners; lessees paid fees to the state and were responsible for feeding, clothing and housing prisoners who worked for them as laborers. In 1900 the

Mississippi State Legislature The Mississippi Legislature is the state legislature of the U.S. state of Mississippi. The bicameral Legislature is composed of the lower Mississippi House of Representatives, with 122 members, and the upper Mississippi State Senate, with 52 ...

appropriated US$80,000 for the purchase of the Parchman Plantation, a property in

."A Brief History of the Mississippi Department of Corrections"
.

. Retrieved September 18, 2010. What is now the prison property was located at a railroad spur called "Gordon Station".Yardley, Jonathan
"In the Fields of Despair"
''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...

'', March 31, 1996. Retrieved March 1, 2011. "The eventual replacement for convict leasing was Parchman Farm, a 20,000-acre tract in the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta, 90 miles south of Memphis at a dilapidated railroad spur known as Gordon Station."

Founding the Mississippi State Penitentiary (1901)

The state of Mississippi purchased land in

in January 1901 to establish a state prison."Mississippi State Penitentiary (Parchman) Photo Collections"
. Mississippi Department of Archives and History. Retrieved August 12, 2010. In 1901 four stockades were constructed, and the state moved prisoners to begin clearing land for crop cultivation. The land was undeveloped Mississippi Delta bottomland and forest, fertile but dense with undergrowth and trees."Article 14 -- No Title"
"Convicts Who Are In Demand After Serving Terms"

Direct article link
''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

''. Retrieved August 14, 2010. Around the time the Mississippi State Penitentiary (MSP) opened, Sunflower County residents objected to having executions performed at the prison. They feared that the county would be stigmatized as a "death county". Mississippi originally performed executions of condemned criminals in their counties of conviction.Cabana, Donald A
"The History of Capital Punishment in Mississippi: An Overview"
, ''Mississippi History Now,''

Mississippi Historical Society The Mississippi Historical Society (MHS) is a historical society located in the U.S. state of Mississippi. The society was established in 1858 but was terminated soon after because of the outbreak of the American Civil War. It remained in hiatus u ...

. Retrieved August 16, 2010. The Mississippi Department of Archives and History says that MSP "was in many ways reminiscent of a gigantic

antebellum Antebellum, Latin for "before war", may refer to: United States history * Antebellum South, the pre-American Civil War period in the Southern United States ** Antebellum Georgia ** Antebellum South Carolina ** Antebellum Virginia * Antebellum ...

plantation A plantation is an agricultural estate, generally centered on a plantation house, meant for farming that specializes in cash crops, usually mainly planted with a single crop, with perhaps ancillary areas for vegetables for eating and so on. The ...

and operated on the basis of a plan proposed by

Governor A governor is an administrative leader and head of a polity or political region, ranking under the head of state and in some cases, such as governors-general, as the head of state's official representative. Depending on the type of political ...

John M. Stone in 1896". Prisoners worked as laborers in its operations. In the fiscal year 1905, Parchman's first year of operations, the State of Mississippi earned $185,000 (more than $4.6 million in 2009 dollars) from Parchman's operations.Buntin, John
"Mississippi's Corrections Reform"
, ''

Governing Magazine ''Governing'' is a website, edited and published in Washington, D.C., that covers state and local government in the United States. Originally a national monthly magazine, it was published in print 1987 and 2019. It covers policy, politics, and the ...

'', August 2010. Retrieved August 13, 2010. Originally Parchman was one of two prisons designated for black men, with the other prisons housing other racial and gender groups.Taylor, William B. and Tyler H. Fletcher
"Profits from convict labor: Reality or myth observations in Mississippi: 1907–1934"
'' Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology'', Volume 5, No. 1. Page 30 (1/9). Retrieved October 31, 2010. In 1909 the State of Mississippi acquired adjacent to the MSP territory, resulting in MDOC having in the Mississippi Delta. As time passed, the state began to consolidate most penal operations in Parchman, making other camps hold minor support roles.Taylor and Fletcher, "Reality or myth", p. 31 In 1916 MDOC bought the O'Keefs Plantation in Quitman County, near Lambert. Originally this plantation was a separate institution, the Lambert Farm. The facility later became Camp B. By 1917 the Parchman property had been fully cleared. The administration divided the facility into a series of camps, housing black and white prisoners of both genders. By 1917 12 male camps and one female camp were established, with racial segregation maintained throughout. The institution became the main hub of activity for Mississippi's prison system. In 1937, during the Great Depression, the prison had 1,989 inmates. OldCampOneParchman

Around the 1950s, residents of Sunflower County were still opposed to the concept of housing an execution chamber at MSP. In September 1954, Governor

Hugh L. White Hugh Lawson White (August 19, 1881September 20, 1965) was an American politician from Mississippi and a member of the Democratic Party. He served two non-consecutive terms as Governor of Mississippi (1936–1940, 1952–1956). Early life Whi ...

called for a special session of the Mississippi Legislature to discuss the application of the death penalty. During that year, the prison installed a

gas chamber A gas chamber is an apparatus for killing humans or other animals with gas, consisting of a sealed chamber into which a poisonous or asphyxiant gas is introduced. Poisonous agents used include hydrogen cyanide and carbon monoxide. History ...

for on-site executions. It replaced a mobile

electric chair An electric chair is a device used to execute an individual by electrocution. When used, the condemned person is strapped to a specially built wooden chair and electrocuted through electrodes fastened on the head and leg. This execution method, ...

, which, between 1940 and February 5, 1952, had been transported to various counties for executions at prisoner's native grounds. In 1942, the prison saw the end of

convict leasing Convict leasing was a system of forced penal labor which was practiced historically in the Southern United States, the laborers being mainly African-American men; it was ended during the 20th century. (Convict labor in general continues; f ...

. The first person to be executed in the gas chamber was Gearald A. Gallego, on March 3, 1955."The Death Penalty In Mississippi, Executions"

. Retrieved April 9, 2022

Parchman Farm and the Freedom Riders (1961)

In the spring of 1961, Freedom Riders went to the American South to work for

desegregation Desegregation is the process of ending the separation of two groups, usually referring to races. Desegregation is typically measured by the index of dissimilarity, allowing researchers to determine whether desegregation efforts are having impact o ...

of public facilities serving interstate transportation, as segregation of such facilities and buses had been declared unconstitutional. The federal government had done nothing to enforce the Supreme Court decisions and southern states ignored the rulings. Violence engulfed the Riders in Alabama, and the federal government intervened. Finally the governors of Alabama and Mississippi agreed to protect the riders, in exchange for being allowed to arrest them. The

Governor of Mississippi A governor is an administrative leader and head of a polity or political region, ranking under the head of state and in some cases, such as governors-general, as the head of state's official representative. Depending on the type of political ...

Ross Barnett Ross Robert Barnett (January 22, 1898November 6, 1987) was the Governor of Mississippi from 1960 to 1964. He was a Southern Democrat who supported racial segregation. Early life Background and learning Born in Standing Pine in Leake Count ...

, did not permit violence against the protesters, but arrested the riders when they reached Jackson, Mississippi. By the end of June, 163 Freedom Riders had been convicted in

Jackson Jackson may refer to: People and fictional characters * Jackson (name), including a list of people and fictional characters with the surname or given name Places Australia * Jackson, Queensland, a town in the Maranoa Region * Jackson North, Qu ...

and many were jailed in Parchman. On June 15, 1961 the state government sent the first set of Freedom Riders from Hinds County Prison to Parchman; to make the protesters as uncomfortable as possible, they were put to work on chain gangs. The first group sent to the farm were 45 male Freedom Riders, 29 blacks and 16 whites. A call went out across the country to keep the Freedom Rides going and "fill the jails" of Mississippi. At one time, 300 Freedom Riders were imprisoned at Parchman Farm. The prison authorities forced the freedom riders to remove their clothing and undergo strip searches. After the strip searches, Deputy Tyson met the freedom riders and began intimidating them. He began by mocking the Freedom Riders, telling them since they wanted to march all the time, they could march right to their cells, and he would lead them. The guards at Parchman Farm were relentless even after all of this mockery. "When they arrived from Jackson, they were stripped of their clothing, and given a tee shirt and loose-fitting boxer shorts ... no more. It was the beginning of many steps to try to intimidate and humiliate the Freedom Riders. They were denied most basic items, such as pencils and paper or books."Fankhauser, David
Biology.clc.uc.edu "Freedom Rides"
. U.C. Clermont Biology. N.p., January 27, 2011. David Fankhauser, a Freedom Rider at Parchman Farm, said,

In our cells, we were given a Bible, an aluminum cup and a tooth brush. The cell measured 6 × 8 feet with a toilet and sink on the back wall, and a bunk bed. We were permitted one shower per week, and no mail was allowed. The policy in the maximum security block was to keep lights on 24 hours a day.

Fankhauser described the meals:

Breakfast every morning was black coffee strongly flavored with
chicory Common chicory (''Cichorium intybus'') is a somewhat woody, perennial herbaceous plant of the family Asteraceae, usually with bright blue flowers, rarely white or pink. Native to the Old World, it has been introduced to North America and Austra ...
,
grits Grits are a type of porridge made from boiled cornmeal. Hominy grits are a type of grits made from hominy – corn that has been treated with an alkali in a process called nixtamalization, with the pericarp (ovary wall) removed. Grits are of ...
, biscuits and blackstrap molasses. Lunch was generally some form of beans or black-eyed peas boiled with pork gristle, served with cornbread. In the evening, it was the same as lunch except it was cold.

The

, visited the farm a few times to check on the activists. He reportedly told the guards to, "break their spirit, not their bones". The governor ordered the activists to be kept away from all other inmates and in maximum security cells. With that order given, the Freedom Riders were stuck in the cell for the most part with not a lot to do. As in many previous jailings of Civil Rights prisoners, they enthusiastically sang Freedom Songs, mostly direct descendants of slave spirituals. They made up songs to fit their new place. The prisoners sang these songs almost non-stop. They tell us that this singing nourished their sense of unity, purpose and spirits. Guard Tyson and the other white guards found the singing irritating, and tried to stop it. He said that it was bothering the cooks. Considering that the cooks were all black, it was clear that the effect on the cooks would be to make them "uppity ..." He ordered the removal of the mattresses and bug screens to force the prisoners to stop singing. Next, the guards tried to barter with the activists. The superintendent finally apologized to the riders, and returned their belongings, as well as the mattresses and screens. It was notable that this negotiation occurred just hours before an inspection tour by a delegation of officials from Minnesota who were examining the treatment of the Freedom Riders. It was a welcome victory for the Freedom Riders. As the 45 Riders struggled in prison, many others were heading South to join the Freedom Rides.

Winonah Myers Margaret Winonah Beamer Myers (September 10, 1941 – March 16, 2018) was an American political activist, who, in 1961 at the age of 19, became a Freedom Rider. Freedom Riders were civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segreg ...

was one of the women who went South and was eventually jailed for her activism. She witnessed the treatment first hand. She was treated just as the men were, with bad living quarters and worse clothing and meals. Although most of the Freedom Riders were bailed out after a month, Myers was the last to leave. She was visited as an activist. Their experience at Parchman gave the Freedom Riders credibility in the

Civil Rights Movement The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement throughout the Unite ...

1970s–1990s

In 1970 the

civil rights Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from infringement by governments, social organizations, and private individuals. They ensure one's entitlement to participate in the civil and political life o ...

lawyer Roy Haber began taking statements from inmates, which eventually ran to 50 pages detailing murders,

rape Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse or other forms of sexual penetration carried out against a person without their consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority, or ...

s, beatings and other

abuses Abuse is the improper usage or treatment of a thing, often to unfairly or improperly gain benefit. Abuse can come in many forms, such as: physical or verbal maltreatment, injury, assault, violation, rape, unjust practices, crimes, or other t ...

they had suffered in Parchman from 1969 to 1971. Four Parchman inmates brought a suit against the prison superintendent in

federal district court The United States district courts are the trial courts of the U.S. federal judiciary. There is one district court for each federal judicial district, which each cover one U.S. state or, in some cases, a portion of a state. Each district cou ...

in 1972, alleging their

under the United States Constitution were being violated by the infliction of cruel and unusual punishment. In the case, '' Gates v. Collier'' (1972), the federal judge William C. Keady found that Parchman Farm violated the Constitution and was an affront to 'modern standards of decency'. Among other reforms, the accommodation was made fit for human habitation, and the trusty system, (where lifers were armed with rifles and set to guard other inmates), was abolished. The state was required to integrate the prison facilities, hire African-American staff members, and construct new prison facilities. In the 1970s the

William L. Waller organized a blue-ribbon committee to study MSP. The committee decided that the state should abandon MSP's for-profit farming system and hire a professional penologist to head the prison. On July 1, 1984 the Legislature of Mississippi amended §§ 99-19-51 of the Mississippi Code; the new amendment stated that prisoners who committed capital crimes after July 1, 1984 would be executed by lethal injection. In the mid-1980s, several state law enforcement officials and postal inspectors went to Parchman to end a widespread scam involving forged money orders. In 1985 area farmers still referred to the facility as being the "Parchman Penal Farm", even though the facility was officially named the "Mississippi State Penitentiary". During that year MSP had over 4,000 prisoners, including 200 women in a few of the camps.Cross, Robert
"A prison's family plan"
''

Chicago Tribune The ''Chicago Tribune'' is a daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, owned by Tribune Publishing. Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" (a slogan for which WGN radio and television a ...

''. October 2, 1985. D1. Retrieved September 23, 2010. "Ten miles east of Shelby, the sprightly cotton fields along Miss. Hwy. 32 begin to recede, and parched weeds on the shoulder squeeze the road down to a single lane of potholes. Highway 32 continues for a few more yards. Then a steel barricade, flanked by a guard tower, cuts it off." and "Now the inmate count at Parchman hovers just above 4000 including 200 women in a couple of camps..." When the

. Retrieved July 21, 2010. The BBC filmed ''

Fourteen Days in May ''Fourteen Days in May'' is a documentary film directed by Paul Hamann and originally shown on television by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in 1987. The programme recounts the final days before the execution of Edward Earl Johnson, an ...

'' (1987) at Parchman. The documentary followed the last two weeks of the life of

Edward Earl Johnson Edward Earl Johnson (June 22, 1960 – May 20, 1987) was a man convicted in 1979 at the age of 18 and subsequently executed by the U.S. state of Mississippi for the murder of a policeman, J.T. Trest, and the sexual assault of a 69-year-old woma ...

, who was executed in the prison's

. In 1997 several prison guards were arrested, accused of illegally interfering with prisoner mail.Dow, David R. and Mark Dow. ''Machinery of Death: The Reality of America's Death Penalty Regime''.

Routledge Routledge () is a British multinational publisher. It was founded in 1836 by George Routledge, and specialises in providing academic books, journals and online resources in the fields of the humanities, behavioural science, education, law ...

, 2002
102
Retrieved July 21, 2010. , 9780415932677. On March 18, 1998, the legislature made another amendment: removing the gas chamber as a method of execution.

2000s to 2020s

The lethal injection table was first used for executions in 2002. On November 17, 2003, Larry Hentz escaped from Unit 24B of MSP;
.

, 17 November 2003. Retrieved August 13, 2010. he was believed to have been traveling with his wife. The escapee and his wife were captured in

San Diego, California San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the eighth most populous city in the United Stat ...

on December 11, 2003. Hentz was returned to prison. In 2005 Tim Climer, the executive director of the Sunflower County Economic Development District, stated that he wanted to develop MSP as a tourist attraction by establishing an interpretive center. In 2010, the Mississippi State Penitentiary became the first correctional facility in the United States to install a system to prevent contraband cell phone usage by inmates. The managed access system was to prevent the authentication and operation of contraband wireless devices within the prison grounds. Other prisoners, visitors and guards had been smuggling in cellphones as whole units or in pieces for later re-assembly and use.

Federal Communications Commission The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains jurisdicti ...

regulations do not allow for devices which interfere with communications on licensed frequencies; The Communications Act only allows a federal agency jam frequencies. The managed access system renders unauthorized devices useless within the prison; it relieves the administration of having to locate or confiscate the devices. It permits authorized devices to operate unimpeded. The technology avoids the legal impediments associated with competing technologies for cell detection and cell-jamming. It ensures that all emergency 911 calls are permitted to complete. Christopher Epps, Commissioner of MDOC, announced the system on September 8, 2010, and suggested that it provided a model for other prisons to use to reduce contraband cell phones."State Prison Uses Technology to Block Inmates' Calls"
. '' JXNTV''. September 8, 2010. Retrieved September 14, 2010. Due to the installation of the system, between August 6, 2010 and September 9, 2010, more than 216,320 texts and calls were blocked.Apel, Therese
"Texts, cell phone calls blocked at Parchman"
''

The Clarion-Ledger ''The Clarion Ledger'' is an American daily newspaper in Jackson, Mississippi. It is the second-oldest company in the state of Mississippi, and is one of the few newspapers in the nation that continues to circulate statewide. It is an operating d ...

,'' at the '' Hattiesburg American''. September 9, 2010. Retrieved September 21, 2010. Between 2014 and 2020, $215 million was cut from the Mississippi Corrections budget, resulting in increasing pressure on all Mississippi prisons,. The 2019 annual inspection report for the prison includes numerous health and safety concerns including broken toilets, sinks and showers, unsanitary kitchens, cells with dangerous electrical fittings and inmates sleeping without mattresses. Photographs illustrating the concerns were included. The 2020 Department of Health report indicates that some progress has been made, but still includes a list of sanitary concerns running to 14 pages which include the same concerns, with the exception of missing mattresses. Photographs are provided.https://msdh.ms.gov/msdhsite/index.cfm/30,10797,118,pdf/Parchamn_Penitentiary_inspection_2020.pdf During 2019 and 2020 there were a series of inmate deaths. The Commissioner of the Department of Corrections resigned at this time. Eight prisoners died in January 2020 through suicide or violence. Later in January 2020, it was reported in the press that the prison had closed Unit 29 due to infrastructure issues, and was arranging for prisoners to be housed in prison facilities outside of Parchman. However, Unit 29 has remained open. The 2021 Department of Health Report contains a three page list of health, safety and hygiene deficiencies identified in the Unit 29 accommodation for prisoners. In February, 2020, a federal lawsuit was filed on behalf of over 150 inmates by rappers Jay-Z and

Yo Gotti Mario Sentell Giden Mims (born May 19, 1981), known professionally as Yo Gotti, is an American rapper, songwriter, and record executive. In 1996, Gotti released his debut album ''Youngsta's On a Come Up'' under the alias Lil Yo. He went on to re ...

regarding "inhumane and dangerous conditions" at the prison. A Federal Department of Justice Civil Rights investigation was commenced in February 2020, to examine whether prisoners were adequately protected from violence in Parchman and three other Mississippi state prisons, whether Parchman failed in its responsibility for suicide prevention and mental-health care, and whether there were excessive use of solitary confinement in Parchman. In April 2022, the Justice Department reported that conditions at the facility were inhumane due to years of neglect by the state.

Location and composition

Mississippi State Penitentiary is in an

unincorporated area An unincorporated area is a region that is not governed by a local municipal corporation. Widespread unincorporated communities and areas are a distinguishing feature of the United States and Canada. Most other countries of the world either have ...

in Sunflower County, Mississippi. The prison which occupies of land, has 53 buildings with a total of of space. As of 2010 the institution can house 4,536 inmates. 1,109 people, as of 2010, work at MSP. Most of MDOC's agricultural enterprise farming activity occurs at MSP. Mississippi Prison Industries has a work program at MSP, with about 190 inmates participating.Media Kit Joseph D. Burns
."

. Retrieved July 20, 2010. The road from the front entrance to the back entrance stretches .Buntin, John
"Down on Parchman Farm"
. ''

''. July 27, 2010. Retrieved August 13, 2010. Donald Cabana, who served as the superintendent and executioner of MSP, said, "the sheer magnitude of the place was difficult to comprehend on first viewing."Cabana, Donald. ''Death at Midnight: The Confession of an Executioner''.

University Press of New England The University Press of New England (UPNE), located in Lebanon, New Hampshire and founded in 1970, was a university press consortium including Brandeis University, Dartmouth College (its host member), Tufts University, the University of New Hampsh ...

, 1998
39
Retrieved from Google News on August 16, 2010. . "Parchman" appears as a place on highway maps. The "Parchman" dot represents the MSP main entrance and several MSP buildings, with the prison territory located to the west of the main entrance.Cheseborough, Steve, ''Blues Traveling: The Holy Sites of Delta Blues''.

University Press of Mississippi The University Press of Mississippi, founded in 1970, is a publisher that is sponsored by the eight state universities in Mississippi. Universities *Alcorn State University *Delta State University * Jackson State University *Mississippi State U ...

, 2004
92
Retrieved from

Google Books Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical ...

on September 29, 2010. , . The main entrance, a metal gate with "Mississippi State Penitentiary" in large letters, is located at the intersection of U.S. Route 49W and Mississippi Highway 32, on the west side of 49W. The

Mississippi Blues Trail The Mississippi Blues Trail was created by the Mississippi Blues Commission in 2006 to place interpretive markers at the most notable historical sites related to the birth, growth, and influence of the blues throughout (and in some cases beyond) ...

marker is located at the Parchman main entrance. Passersby are not permitted to stop to photograph buildings at the Parchman main entrance.Cheseborough, Steve, ''Blues Traveling: The Holy Sites of Delta Blues''.

, 2004
93
Retrieved from

on September 29, 2010. , . The rear entrance is about east of Shelby, at MS 32. A private portion of Highway 32 extends from the main entrance of MSP to the rear entrance of MSP. U.S. 49W is a major highway used to travel to MSP.Arsenault, Raymond. ''Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice''.

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...

US, 2006
325
Retrieved from ''

'' on August 13, 2010. , . The prison facility is located near the northern border of

.Moye, J. Todd. '' Let the People Decide: Black Freedom and White Resistance Movements in Sunflower County, Mississippi, 1945-1986''.

University of North Carolina Press The University of North Carolina Press (or UNC Press), founded in 1922, is a university press that is part of the University of North Carolina. It was the first university press founded in the Southern United States. It is a member of the As ...

, November 29, 2004
28
Retrieved from

on February 26, 2012. , . The City of Drew is south of MSP, and Ruleville is about from MSP. Parchman is south of Tutwiler, about south of

Memphis, Tennessee Memphis is a city in the U.S. state of Tennessee. It is the seat of Shelby County in the southwest part of the state; it is situated along the Mississippi River. With a population of 633,104 at the 2020 U.S. census, Memphis is the second-mos ...

, and about north of

. Throughout MSP's history, it was referred to as "the prison without walls" due to the dispersed camps within its property. Hugh Ferguson, the director of public affairs of MSP, said that the prison is not like

Alcatraz Alcatraz Island () is a small island in San Francisco Bay, offshore from San Francisco, California, United States. The island was developed in the mid-19th century with facilities for a lighthouse, a military fortification, and a military pris ...

, because it is not centralized in one or several main buildings. Instead MSP consists of several prison camps spread out over a large area, called "units". Each unit serves a specific segment of the prison population, and each unit is surrounded by walls with

barbed tape Barbed tape or razor wire is a mesh of metal strips with sharp edges whose purpose is to prevent passage by humans. The term "razor wire", through long usage, has generally been used to describe barbed tape products. Razor wire is much sharper th ...

.Rubin, Richard. ''Confederacy of Silence: A True Tale of the New Old South''.

Simon & Schuster Simon & Schuster () is an American publishing company and a subsidiary of Paramount Global. It was founded in New York City on January 2, 1924 by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. As of 2016, Simon & Schuster was the third largest pu ...

, 2002
321
Retrieved from

on July 20, 2010. , . The perimeter of the overall Parchman property has no fencing. The prison property, located on flat farmland of the Mississippi Delta, has almost no trees. Ferguson said that a potential escapee would have no place to hide. Richard Rubin, author of ''Confederacy of Silence: A True Tale of the New Old South'', said that MSP's environment is so inhospitable for escape that prisoners working in the fields are not chained to one another, and one overseer supervises each gang.Rubin, Richard. ''Confederacy of Silence: A True Tale of the New Old South''.

, 2002
317
Retrieved from

on July 20, 2010. , . A potential escapee could wander for days without leaving the MSP property.Feldscher, Karen
"The Warden"
'' Northeastern Alumni Magazine''. September 2004. Retrieved August 12, 2010. As of 1971 guards patrol MSP on horseback instead of on foot. The rear entrance is protected by a steel barricade and a guard tower. In 1985 Robert Cross of the ''

'' said "The physical surroundings--cotton and bean fields, the 21 scattered camps, the barbed wire enclosures--suggest that nothing much has changed since the days, early in this century, when outsiders could visit Parchman State Penal Farm only on the fifth Sunday of those rare months containing more than four." MSP has two main areas, Area I and Area II. Area I includes Unit 29 and the Front Vocational School. Area II includes Units 25-26, Units 30-32, and Unit 42. Seven units house prisoners. As of the 1970s and 1980s the prison grounds had small red houses that were used for

conjugal visit A conjugal visit is a scheduled period in which an inmate of a prison or jail is permitted to spend several hours or days in private with a visitor. The visitor is usually their legal spouse, and the visit's purpose is usually sexual activity. Th ...

s.Anderson, Jack
"Conditions Inside Many Prisons In U.S. Dehumanizing, Perilous"
''

The Toledo Blade ''The Blade'', also known as the ''Toledo Blade'', is a newspaper in Toledo, Ohio published daily online and printed Thursday and Sunday by Block Communications. The newspaper was first published on December 19, 1835. Overview The first issue o ...

''. March 13, 1977. B5. Retrieved from Google News on July 20, 2010. The prison offered conjugal visits until February 1, 2014."Conjugal Visits"
.

. Retrieved July 20, 2010.

Inmate housing units

Six units currently house prisoners."Locking Down on Illegal Cell Phone Traffic"

Archive

. 2 (2/31). Retrieved July 19, 2010. Units that currently function as inmate housing include:"Mississippi State Penitentiary"
(2000-03.pdf)
Archive

. 10 (3/3). Retrieved July 19, 2010. * Unit 25 **In the mid-2000s Unit 25 had the Pre-Release/Job Assistance Alcohol and Drug Therapeutic Community After Care Program, which had 48 beds. The program was for offenders who are about to be released from prison."Mississippi Department of Corrections Alcohol and Drug Treatment Programs FY 2004 Annual Report"
.

. 1. Retrieved July 20, 2010. * Unit 26 **Units 26, 27, and 28, which in total have a capacity of 388 people, together had a price tag of $3,450,000. * Unit 29 MissStatePenAerialMapFeb211992Unit29

**Unit 29, a 16-building medium security complex, opened in 1980 and designed by Dale and Associates."Mississippi State Penitentiary, Unit 29"
Dale And Associates. Retrieved July 19, 2010. Unit 29 houses all male death row inmates in MDOC. **The building, which was under construction in the 1970s and originally had a capacity of 1,456, had a construction cost of $22,045,000. In 2000 a prisoner riot occurred at Unit 29, leading to some injuries. Renovations occurred in 1998, including the conversion of dormitory units into cell units. Unit 29 is the primary farming support unit of MSP. It has 1,561 beds, which house minimum, medium, and close custody inmates. The unit is the prison's largest in terms of prisoner capacity. In the mid-1990s Unit 29 was the main maximum security camp for the population. Most inmates started their stays in Unit 29, and almost every prisoner went through the unit. Renovations of Unit 29 in the financial year of 2000 added about 240 beds. Carrothers Construction did phase I of the renovations for $20,278,000. By 2001 MDOC built a kitchen and had converted half of Unit 29's open bay dormitories to individual cells; together the changes had a price tag of $21,760,284 of

U.S. Department of Justice The United States Department of Justice (DOJ), also known as the Justice Department, is a federal executive department of the United States government tasked with the enforcement of federal law and administration of justice in the United State ...

grant money."Mississippi Department of Corrections receives $2.8 million grant from U.S. Department of Justice"
.

. December 13, 2001. Retrieved January 25, 2011. Unit 29-A houses the A&D Treatment Program for Special Needs program, which is for prisoners with

HIV The human immunodeficiency viruses (HIV) are two species of ''Lentivirus'' (a subgroup of retrovirus) that infect humans. Over time, they cause acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), a condition in which progressive failure of the immune ...

/ AIDS who are more than 6 months and within 30 months of their release dates."Treatment Programs Alcohol and Drug".
Fiscal Year 2009 Annual Report
''.

. 59. Retrieved July 20, 2010. In 2020 J Building (one of 5 Buildings making up Unit 29) was partially closed due to deterioration. J building continues to house death row inmates. * Unit 30 **Unit 30 is the education and drug treatment facility. It was designed by Dale and Associates."Correctional"
. Dale And Associates. Retrieved August 16, 2010. Unit 30, a part of the Alcohol and Drug Therapeutic Community Treatment Centers (ADTC-TC), has 480 beds. Unit 30 has two housing buildings, A and B, and each building has two housing zones, A and B. Each zone houses 108 prisoners. Previously each zone housed 120 prisoners. * Unit 31 **Unit 31 serves as the unit for inmates with severe disabilities. The unit includes a 12-week alcohol and drug program based on principles of Alcoholics Anonymous. * Unit 32 **Unit 32, a prison unit,"July 1, 1989–June 30, 1990 Annual Report"
.

. 9 (15/83). Retrieved September 1, 2010. was the designated unit of housing for maximum security and death row convicts.,"Prison won't cure overcrowding"
'' The Advocate''. September 18, 1990. Retrieved August 9, 2010. "Hard-core Mississippi prisoners will be housed in a $41 million prison complex that opened last month, but the facility won't come close to providing room for all state inmates, officials say. The complex, called Unit 32, adds more than 15 times the current maximum-security bed space, but it's still not enough." and Unit 32 served as MSP's lockdown unit. Unit 32, designed by Dale and Associates, has " Supermax" cells. **The U32 housing facility has five two story housing facilities, a recreation building, and external structures such as gun towers. Each housing building has 200 cells and of living space. Each housing building was made of precast concrete, and 6,700 cubic yards of concrete and of reinforcing steel were used to build each housing building. Building A (Alpha Building) served as the maximum security area."Visitation"
.

. Retrieved September 1, 2010. Building B (Bravo Building) also housed closed custody prisoners. Building C (Charlie Building) served as death row. Unit 32 was intended to reduce maintenance necessities by using durable structure and equipment and to allow prison administrators to establish a high level of control over U32's residents. The Unit 32 Support Facility houses administrative offices, a canteen, medical services, a library, and a visitation area. With Unit 32 closed, Parchman had about 1,000 empty spaces for prisoners. MDOC has continued to maintain Unit 32 so the state can house contract prisoners there. In 2020 MDOC re-opened Unit 32 despite prisoner complaints of poor conditions. * Unit 42 ** Unit 42, the prison hospital, has 54 beds. In terms of capacity it is the smallest residential unit. The prison hospital serves female inmates throughout the MDOC system. In December 2009 MDOC opened the Compassionate and Palliative Care Unit, a hospice for dying prisoners, in the hospital. In 2010 MDOC classified 13 units as "closed housing units". All of the units in the prison that formerly housed prisoners and no longer function as inmate housing include: * Unit 4 * Unit 10 ** Units 10, 12, and 20, which together housed 300 people, together had a total cost of $1,000,000. * Unit 12 ** Unit 12 had the pre-release operations. * Unit 15, Building B * Unit 16 **The unit, with a capacity of 68 people, was built in the 1970s for $3,000,000. * Unit 17 **Unit 17 houses the execution chamber for condemned inmates. A condemned prisoner is transferred to a holding cell next to the death chamber 48 hours before the scheduled time of his or her execution. Cell No. 14 is used to house inmates prior to execution. The execution chamber is a by room. **Unit 17 is west of Guard Row. It is a one story building with a flat roof. Reilly Morse of the '' Institute of Southern Studies'' said that dirt surrounded the unit, and no vegetation was present.Morse, Reilly
"Voices: A Freedom Rider Returns to Parchman"
. '' Institute for Southern Studies''. April 15, 2012. Retrieved April 15, 2012. **In 1961 the State of Mississippi incarcerated Freedom Riders in the unit. Unit 17's prisoner housing was closed on October 25, 2004. At one time the 56-bed Unit 17 housed the prison's death row. * K-9 * Unit 20 * Fire House * Unit 22 **Units 22 and 23 and the prison hospital, which in total have a capacity of 324 people, together had a price tag of $1,850,000. * Unit 23 * Unit 24 **The unit, with a capacity of 192 people, was built in the 1970s for $2,250,000. Unit 24E and Unit 25 in total had a capacity of 352 people, and they had a total cost of $1,750,000. The total construction cost of all of Unit 24, constructed in 1975, is $3.6 million. The unit had 192 single cell medium security beds. The facility has two stories and three housing zones, each having 64 beds. Zones A and B housed special needs prisoners who were receiving mental health care. Zone C had general population A and B security level prisoners. * Unit 27 **In the 1990s Unit 27 was the protective custody facility. Richard Rubin, author of ''Confederacy of Silence: A True Tale of the New Old South'', noticed that most of the prisoners in Unit 27 were White, while overall in MSP most prisoners were Black. * Unit 28 **In the mid-2000s Unit 28 was the facility for the A&D Treatment Program for Special Needs program, which is for prisoners with

/ AIDS who are more than 7 months and within 30 months of their release dates. The program began as a therapeutic community in April 2002; previously the program was a 12-week program. Historically Unit 28 was the housing where HIV positive offenders were segregated into. In 2010 MDOC Commissioner

Chris Epps Christopher B. Epps (born January 25, 1961) is a Federal inmate and a former commissioner of the Mississippi Department of Corrections (MDOC) and career employee in the state criminal justice system though he started his career as a teacher. Appoi ...

said that MDOC, beginning in May, would no longer segregate HIV offenders. By August 2010 Unit 28, which had 192 beds, closed. **The $41 million unit opened in August 1990, increasing MSP's maximum security bed space by over 15 percent; during that year Mississippi officials said that the prison needed more maximum security space after Unit 32's opening. Prior to Unit 32's opening, MSP had 56 "lockdown" cells for difficult prisoners. By 2003 the

American Civil Liberties Union The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1920 "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States". T ...

filed a lawsuit on behalf of six inmates, alleging poor conditions in Unit 32's death row. In 2007 three inmates in Unit 32 were murdered by other inmates in a several month span.Crone, Kandiss
"Guard Details Security Problems at Parchman"
''

WLBT WLBT (channel 3) is a television station in Jackson, Mississippi, United States, affiliated with NBC. It is owned by Gray Television, which also operates American Spirit Media–owned Fox affiliate WDBD (channel 40) and Vicksburg-licensed MyN ...

''. August 29, 2007. Retrieved July 19, 2010. During that year a guard at Unit 32 said that under-staffing contributed to the security lapses. In 2010 MDOC and the

(ACLU) reached an agreement to close Unit 32 and transfer prisoners to other areas. Mentally ill prisoners in the unit will be transferred to the East Mississippi Correctional Facility near Meridian, Mississippi.

Guard Row

"Guard Row" is the area where employees of MSP and their dependents live. As of the 1970s "Guard Row", a nickname for the main road that bisects the prison, has identical wood frame houses, most of which had been built in the 1930s by the

Work Projects Administration The Works Progress Administration (WPA; renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to carry out public works projects, in ...

. Around 1971 the state charged employees a rent of 10 to 20 dollars (about $- adjusted for inflation) per month, a rate described by Donald Cabana, a former superintendent of MSP, as "nominal". The state provided housing for employees due to the isolation of MSP, and therefore the staff can quickly respond to emergencies such as inmate disturbances or escapes. As of the 1970s multiple generations of families lived and worked at MSP.Cabana, Donald. ''Death at Midnight: The Confession of an Executioner''.

, 1998
37
Retrieved from Google News on July 20, 2010. . The internal audit building, as of 2002, is on Guard Row.

Education

The Sunflower County Consolidated School District serves children of employees residing on the grounds of Parchman. Students are zoned to A. W. James Elementary School in

Drew Drew may refer to: __NOTOC__ Places ;In the United States * Drew, Georgia, an unincorporated community * Drew, Mississippi, a city * Drew, Missouri, an unincorporated community * Drew, Oregon, an unincorporated community * Drew County, Arkansas ...

for elementary, Drew Hunter Middle School in Drew,"Handbook 2012-2013"

Archive
Sunflower County School District. Retrieved October 9, 2013. and Thomas E. Edwards Sr. High School (formerly Ruleville Central High School) in Ruleville.Amy, Jeff
"Mississippi to return Okolona schools to local control; district merger ends Drew High School"
''

Associated Press The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. ne ...

'' at '' The Republic''. May 17, 2012. Retrieved June 12, 2012. The article would have stated that Drew High School merged into Ruleville Central High School (now Edwards High School). As Parchman was previously in the Drew School District, its zoned school was formerly Drew High/Drew Hunter High. Therefore its high school changed to Ruleville Central. Residents were previously zoned to the Drew School District,"Drew School District Audited Financial Statements For the Year Ended June 30, 2005"

PDF
Office of the State Auditor, State of Mississippi. 12 (18/82). Retrieved July 20, 2010. and children who lived on the grounds of MSP attended A.W. James Elementary School and Drew Hunter High School in

. Prior to the 2010–2011 school year the Drew School District secondary schools were Hunter Middle School and Drew High School. On July 1, 2012, the Drew School District consolidated into the Sunflower district, and the high school division of Drew Hunter closed as of that date, with high school students rezoned to Ruleville Central. In 1969 the State of Mississippi passed a law written by Ruleville-based state senator Robert L. Crook that allowed Parchman employees to use up to $60 ($ when adjusted for inflation) every month to pay for educational costs for their children. As a result some Parchman employees sent their children to

North Sunflower Academy North Sunflower Academy is a private school, founded to provide a segregated education for white students in unincorporated Sunflower County, Mississippi, in the Mississippi Delta area, between Ruleville and Drew. The school has grades Kinderg ...

, and the State of Mississippi used general support funds to pay for some of North Sunflower Academy's transportation costs, including school buses, bus drivers, and gasoline. According to a circa November 1974 ''

Delta Democrat Times The ''Delta Democrat Times'' (sometimes spelled ''Delta Democrat-Times'') is a daily newspaper that has been published in Greenville, Mississippi, United States since 1938, when Hodding Carter merged his ''Delta Star'', which he started with his wi ...

'' article, the State of Mississippi spent over $250,000 ($ when adjusted for inflation) in tuition costs and thousands of dollars in transportation costs for North Sunflower. By that time nobody had legally challenged that law in court.

Constance Curry Constance Winifred Curry (July 19, 1933 – June 20, 2020) was an American civil rights activist, educator, and writer. A longtime opponent of racial discrimination, she was the first white woman to serve on the executive committee of the Stud ...

, author of ''Silver Rights'', stated that it was legal under Mississippi law but may have been unconstitutional under U.S. federal law. Parchman, along with other areas in Sunflower County, is within the service area of the Mississippi Delta Community College (MDCC). MDCC has the Drew Center in Drew, while its main campus is in Moorhead. Sunflower County Library System operates the Drew Public Library in Drew.

Cemeteries

Parchman also has three cemeteries; prisoners are buried on-site. A dead prisoner may be buried in one of two of the cemeteries. Hundreds of prisoners had been buried at two of the cemeteries.

Other facilities

The prison has a Visitation Center, which serves as a point of entry and as a security checkpoint for visitors to MSP. After security screening, visitors depart the visitation center in buses bound for the specific units. The Mississippi State Penitentiary Training Academy and the Thomas O. "Pete" Wilson Adult Basic Education (ABE) facility are located on the MSP grounds."July 1, 1989–June 30, 1990 Annual Report"
.

. 10 (16/83). Retrieved September 1, 2010. "The Place", a restaurant, is also on the prison property. Parchman has the Rodeo Arena, a venue for a prison rodeo. The Mississippi State Penitentiary POTW (

Publicly owned treatment works A publicly owned treatment works (POTW) is a term used in the United States for a sewage treatment plant owned, and usually operated, by a government agency. In the U.S., POTWs are typically owned by local government agencies, and are usually desig ...

) numbers one and two are the institution's

sewage treatment Sewage treatment (or domestic wastewater treatment, municipal wastewater treatment) is a type of wastewater treatment which aims to remove contaminants from sewage to produce an effluent that is suitable for discharge to the surrounding e ...

plants. The

United States Postal Service The United States Postal Service (USPS), also known as the Post Office, U.S. Mail, or Postal Service, is an independent agency of the executive branch of the United States federal government responsible for providing postal service in the U ...

operates the Parchman Post Office along Parchman Road 12/ Mississippi Highway 32 inside the prison property. Mississippi State Penitentiary has a dedicated fire department, (MSP Fire Department"State Fire Marshall's Office Investigating Building Fire at MSP"
.

. Retrieved July 20, 2010.) a wastewater treatment plant, road crews, utility crews, a grocery store, and a hospital. The fire department, which utilizes prisoners as firefighters, responds outside of the prison boundaries. Parchman contains the superintendent's guest house, used to accommodate guests. As part of a longstanding agreement, the

stayed in the house once annually before conducting an inspection of the prison.

History of composition

When the prison farm was first established, forests were cleared and land was put into cultivation. Prisoners "deadened" or circled the trees. A sawmill opened, and the wood was converted into planks used to build the housing in the prison. In 1911 what was then "Parchman Place" had ten camps, with each camp holding over 100 prisoners and working on . The central buildings, including the superintendent's residence, the offices, a hospital with a capacity for 70 patients, the general store, the sawmill, and the brick and tile works, were placed in a location referred to as "Parchman". The post office was located along a railroad. Each camp had a telephone system that was headquartered in the "Parchman" location. By 1906 the state sent the healthy, young black males incarcerated in the Mississippi penal system to MSP and to the Belmont Farm. Other population groups in the Mississippi penal system went to other farms; White men went to the Rankin Farm in Rankin County, and all women went to the Oakley Farm in

Hinds County Hinds County is a county located in the U.S. state of Mississippi. With its county seats ( Raymond and the state's capital, Jackson), Hinds is the most populous county in Mississippi with a 2020 census population of 227,742 residents. Hinds Cou ...

. By the early 1900s the majority of incarcerated felons in the State of Mississippi were sent to Parchman.Oshinsk
137
Around 1911 prisoners who developed chronic illnesses were sent from MSP to the Oakley prison. In 1917 the Parchman property had been fully cleared, and the administration divided the facility into a series of camps, housing black and white prisoners of both genders. By that year MSP had 12 male prison camps and one female prison camp. Throughout much of the prison's history, the prison authorities decided not to build fences and walls because the MSP property had a large size and a remote location. David Oshinsky, author of ''Worse Than Slavery'', said that in the early 20th century Parchman, from the outside, "looked like a typical

Delta Delta commonly refers to: * Delta (letter) (Δ or δ), a letter of the Greek alphabet * River delta, at a river mouth * D ( NATO phonetic alphabet: "Delta") * Delta Air Lines, US * Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 that causes COVID-19 Delta may also ...

plantation, with cattle barns, vegetable gardens, mules dotting the landscape, and cotton rows stretching for miles." Alan Lomax, a folklorist, wrote in ''The Land Where Blues Began'' that "Only a few strands of barbed wire marked the boundary between the Parchman State Penitentiary and the so-called free world. Yet every Delta black knew he could easily find himself on the wrong side of that fence." Camp One became the administrative and commercial center of Parchman. It was located near the main gate, the railroad depot, and the main road. William B. Taylor and Tyler H. Fletcher, authors of ''Profits from convict labor: Reality or myth observations in Mississippi: 1907–1934'', said that Camp One, by 1917, appeared like "a little city." Camp One housed the residences of the superintendent and the superintendent's staff, the residences of the camp sergeant and the two assistants of the sergeant, a hospital, a gin, a church, a post office, and a visitor's building. The facility, known as the "front camp", also housed an administration building and an infirmary described by Oshinsky as "crude." Newly arriving prisoners were processed at the administration building, and they received their prison uniforms there. Taylor and Fletcher said that the other camps "amounted to little more than wooden barracks surrounded by cultivated land." Within Parchman, the camps other than Camp One shared of land. MSPPrisoncamp

In the 1930s the female camp, mostly African-American,Cole, Hunter. ''The Legs Murder Scandal''.

343
Retrieved from

on October 31, 2010. , was isolated from the male camps. An enclave within the camp was reserved for white inmates.Cole, Hunter. ''The Legs Murder Scandal''.

344
Retrieved from

on October 31, 2010. , Around 1968, Camp B was one of the largest African-American camps of MSP.Ferris, William R. ''Give My Poor Heart Ease: Voices of the Mississippi Blues''.

UNC Press Books The University of North Carolina Press (or UNC Press), founded in 1922, is a university press that is part of the University of North Carolina. It was the first university press founded in the Southern United States. It is a member of the Ass ...

, 2009
77
Retrieved September 20, 2010. , . Camp B was located in

Quitman County, near Lambert, away from the main Parchman complex. Camp B's buildings have been demolished. Until the post-lawsuit units opened in the 1970s, Parchman's newest unit was the first offender camp, a red brick building that opened in the 1960s. The building had a fence, two guard towers at opposite corners, and a gateshack. Donald Cabana, who became the prison's superintendent and executioner, said that the building was "not physically impressive."Cabana, Donald. ''Death at Midnight: The Confession of an Executioner''.

, 1998
49
Retrieved from Google News on October 14, 2010. . Around 1971, most areas of the prison had no guard towers, no cell blocks, no tiers, and no high walls. Cabana said that the prison was "a throwback to another time and place". Cabana described the employee housing as "by and large drab and in various states of disrepair." During that time Camp 16 served as the Maximum Security Unit (MSU); the building was surrounded by double fences with

concertina wire Concertina wire or Dannert wire is a type of barbed wire or razor wire that is formed in large coils which can be expanded like a concertina. In conjunction with plain barbed wire (and/or razor wire/tape) and steel pickets, it is most ofte ...

, and gun towers were located at the four corners of the building. MSU housed death row inmates and inmates put under maximum security, and the camp housed the gas chamber. MSP staff called the building "Little

". Cabana, a native of Massachusetts, said that Camp 16 was the only building that resembled the northern U.S. penitentiary that he was familiar with. Around that year MSP had around 2,000 men and less than 100 women in its camps. Most camps were "work camps", which had a quota of acreage to maintain. Some had special functions; for instance the "disability" camp did the laundry, and the "front camp" housed prisoners who worked in the administration building; those inmates worked as clerks, janitors, and maintenance personnel. Each camp usually had no more than 100-200 prisoners. Because the prison population was spread across many units, the population would have difficulty engineering major disturbances. Cabana cited this example to say "In some respects, Parchman was a penologist's dream."Cabana, Donald. ''Death at Midnight: The Confession of an Executioner''.

, 1998
40–41
Retrieved from Google News on October 14, 2010. . CampBMap

After the 1972 Gates v. Collier federal judge ruling, the State of Mississippi replaced its previous inmate housing units, called "cages", with barracks buildings surrounded by barbed wire-topped fences. John Buntin of ''

'' said that the new units were "hastily built." Several MSP units were built in the 1970s; 3,080 beds were added for a total cost of $25,345,000. In the 1980s Mississippi State Penitentiary had 21 scattered camps. In 1983 Camp 25 served as the female unit, and the unit had no parking facilities. After

, 2002
320
Retrieved from

on July 20, 2010. , . in 1990 Mississippi had a population of 2,573,216, so about .026% of Mississippi's population was incarcerated in MSP at that time. The prison population had been increasing rapidly over the decade leading to 1995, and the prison officials converted a gymnasium into inmate housing and still faced overcrowding. Many construction projects occurred during that time. In the early 2000s MSP had five areas. Area I had Unit 29. Area II had units 12, 15-B, 20-, 25-26, and 30. Area III had units 4, 10, 17, 20, 22-24, 27-28, 31, and 42. Area IV had Unit 32. Area V had Central Security. At that time 18 units housed prisoners, with the 1,488-bed Unit 29 being the largest unit in terms of prisoner capacity and the 60-bed Unit 17 being the smallest. At that time the prison's capacity was 5,631. The Internal Audit building, located along Guard Row, was destroyed in a fire in 2002. In the mid-2000s MSP had three areas. Area I had Units 15 and 29 and the Front Vocational School. Area II had units 25-26, 28, 30-31, and 42. Area III had units 4 and 32. At the time 10 units housed the 4,700 prisoners in the facility, with the 1,568 bed Unit 29 being the largest unit and the 54-bed Unit 42 (the hospital unit) being the smallest. At that time the prison's capacity was 4,840.

Weather

Karen Feldscher of the '' Northeastern University Alumni Magazine'' said that in the region around MSP routinely had humid summers of 90 or more degrees

Fahrenheit The Fahrenheit scale () is a temperature scale based on one proposed in 1724 by the physicist Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit (1686–1736). It uses the degree Fahrenheit (symbol: °F) as the unit. Several accounts of how he originally defined hi ...

with mosquitoes present, while the winters "are brown and stark."

Demographics

As of September 1, 2008, Mississippi State Penitentiary, with a capacity of 4,527, had 4,181 prisoners, comprising a total of 29.04% of people within the

-operated prisons, county jails, and community work centers. Of the male inmates at MSP, 3,024 were black, 1,119 were white, 30 Hispanic, six were Asian, and one was Native American. As of 2008, there was one African-American woman confined at MSP. As of November 8, 2010 Parchman has about 998 free world employees. In 1917, 90% of Parchman's prisoners were black. Most of the black prisoners were serving long sentences for violent crimes against other blacks and were illiterate laborers and farm workers. Of the black prisoners who committed crimes against other blacks, 58% had sentences of ten years or more and 38% had life sentences. Of the black prisoners who committed crimes against other blacks, 35% had committed murder, 17% had committed manslaughter, 8% had committed assault and battery, and 5% had committed rape or attempted rape. In 1937, the Parchman community had 250 residents, while the prison held 1,989 inmates. In 1971, the prison employed fewer than 75 free world employees because trusties performed many tasks at Parchman. The free world employees included administrative, medical, and support employees.Cabana, Donald. ''Death at Midnight: The Confession of an Executioner''.

, 1998
42
Retrieved from Google News on October 14, 2010. .

Prisoner life

Located on fertile Mississippi Delta land, Parchman served as a working farm. Inmate labor was used for many tasks from raising cotton and other farm food products, to building railroads and extracting turpentine gum from pine trees. Parchman, then as now, was in prime cotton-growing country. Inmates labored there in the fields raising cotton, soybeans and other cash crops, and produced livestock, swine, poultry and milk. Inmates spent much of their time working with crops except the period from mid-November to mid-February, because the weather was too cold for farm work. Donald Cabana, who previously served as a superintendent and an executioner at Parchman, said that the labor situation was an advantage to the prison because inmates were occupied with it.Cabana, Donald. ''Death at Midnight: The Confession of an Executioner''.

, 1998
41
Retrieved from Google News on October 14, 2010. . Cabana added that "idleness" was an issue facing many other prisons.Cabana, Donald. ''Death at Midnight: The Confession of an Executioner''.

, 1998
41-42
Retrieved from Google News on October 14, 2010. . Throughout MSP's history, most prisoners have worked in the fields. Historically, prisoners worked for ten hours per day, six days per week. In previous eras prisoners lived in long, single-story buildings made of bricks and lumber produced on-site; the inmate housing units were often called "cages". Prison officials selected prisoners they deemed trustworthy and made them into armed guards; the prisoners were named "trustee guards" and "trustee shooters". Most male inmates did farm labor; others worked in the brickyard, cotton gin, prison hospital, and sawmill. Women worked in the sewing room, making clothes, bed sheets, and mattresses. They also canned vegetables and ran the laundry.Oshinsk
172
"Yet sex and rape were all too common in a camp supervised by male sergeants and guarded by male trusties." On Sundays prisoners attended religious services and participated in baseball games, with teams formed on the basis of the camps. Throughout its history, Parchman Farm had a reputation of being one of the toughest prisons in the United States. This reputation antedated the 1960s arrival of the Freedom Riders. Cabana said "A life sentence in Parchman is an eternity." Historically most male prisoners wore "ring arounds", consisting of trousers and shirts with horizontal black and white stripes. Female prisoners wore "up and downs", which were baggy dresses with vertical stripes.Oshinsky 137–138. "Trustee shooters" wore vertical stripes.Oshinsky 140. "Comprising about 20 percent of the prison population, the trustee-shooters lived apart from the gunmen, wore vertical stripes instead of horizontal ones, and carried .30-. 30 Winchesters on the job. There were no written criteria for..." Parchman Penal Farm

Female prisoners at the Parchman Post Office

In the 1930s, most of the crops planted at Parchman were cotton. The facility's brickyard, factories, gin, and machine shop gained the State of Mississippi profits. For most of the day, the female prisoners sewed utilitarian cloth goods, including bedding, curtains, and uniforms for the institution. When sewing labor was not available, women chopped cotton. For a period in Parchman's history, women lived in Camp 13. Male sergeants and male trusties guarded the women. As a result, sexual intercourse and rape occurred in the women's unit. Women lived in large dormitories. White women usually numbered between zero and five, black women usually numbered 25 to 65. White female prisoners lived in a small brick building, while African-American prisoners lived in what David Oshinsky, author of ''Worse than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice'' called a "large shed-like building", with a fence separating the two buildings. Cabana said that in 1971 the prison environment was "relatively tranquil" because many prisoners worked outside instead of being confined in their cells for long periods of time. The prison was still segregated in the 1970s. Around that time a black leather strap named "Black Annie" was used to punish prisoners who broke rules. Other prisoners who broke rules were forced to stand for hours at a time on up-ended soda crates. During the era, stronger prisoners attacked and raped weaker prisoners, and prison staff provided little to no intervention in these incidents. Some inmates worked as "houseboys", maintaining the residences of prison officials. Some prisoners were allowed to leave the prison grounds to pick up supplies and transport them back to MSP. Karen Feldscher of '' Northeastern Alumni Magazine'' stated that the trustee guard system often produced "disastrous results." Cabana said that the trustee system "apparently worked quite well, as there were seldom any disciplinary problems among the shooters". Because trustees performed many tasks, the prison employed relatively few free world employees. Because of the scenario, Cabana said that the prisoners were the people who carried guns and enforced rules, while in Massachusetts the prison guards carried the guns and enforced rules.Cabana, Donald. ''Death at Midnight: The Confession of an Executioner''.

, 1998
70
Retrieved from Google News on October 14, 2010. . In the 1960s, shortly after inmates arrived at Parchman, they received nicknames that reflected personality traits and physical characteristics. For instance, a man named Johnny Lee Thomas was nicknamed "Have Mercy" when he protested a beating of a fellow inmate. Thomas stated that Parchman was, in the words of William Ferris, author of ''Give My Poor Heart Ease'', "a world of fear in which only the strong and intelligent survive". Ferris added that "Like the trickster rabbit, the black prisoner had to move quicker and think faster than his white boss." After the Gates decision, the number of murders of prisoners dropped overall. When integration came, prisoners formed gangs based on race to protect one another. In addition, the prison gangs gained the power that trustee shooters had held. In 1990, the prison emergency room treated 1,136 incidents of prisoner on employee assaults and 1,169 prisoner on prisoner assaults.Oshinsky, David M.: Worse Than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice. Free Press, 1997. p. 250. Prisoners may receive a Bachelor of Arts degree in Christian Ministry from the

New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary (NOBTS) is a Baptist theological institute in New Orleans, Louisiana. It is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. Missions and evangelism are core focuses of the seminary. NOBTS offers doctoral ...

. The Parchman Animal Care & Training (PACT) program, which was established in April 2008, organizes inmate care of livestock.

Musical traditions

While living at MSP, many African-American inmates sang work chants, a tradition traced to

West Africa West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of Africa. The United Nations defines Western Africa as the 16 countries of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, M ...

. Work chants were used by farm laborers to pace their work. While inmates worked, a leader called the chant, with other inmates following him. One song includes a story of an inmate swimming through the Sunflower River to confuse bloodhounds, verses showcasing prisoners who return hoes to their commanding captain and refuse to continue working, and a story of a beautiful woman named Rosie who waits outside the prison boundary. William Ferris, author of ''Give My Poor Heart Ease'', said that "for all of these inmates, music was a means to survive within the prison's grim world."Ferris, William R. ''Give My Poor Heart Ease: Voices of the Mississippi Blues''.

, 2009. 78. Retrieved September 20, 2010. , . The

added Parchman to its list of sites at 10 AM on Tuesday September 28, 2010; Parchman received the trail's 113th historical marker. The folk song collectors

John John is a common English name and surname: * John (given name) * John (surname) John may also refer to: New Testament Works * Gospel of John, a title often shortened to John * First Epistle of John, often shortened to 1 John * Secon ...

and Alan Lomax visited Parchman Farm in 1933, during a recording trip across the Southern states of the US. Lomax wrote that they recorded a prisoner singing:

Ask my cap'n, how could he stand to see me cry He said you low down nigger, I can stand to see you die

Reflecting on the significance of the singing he had heard in Parchman, Alan Lomax later wrote:

I had to face that here were the people that everyone else regarded as the dregs of society, dangerous human beings, brutalized and from them came the music which I thought was the finest thing I'd ever hear coming out of my country. They made
Walt Whitman Walter Whitman (; May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among ...
look like a child. They made
Carl Sandburg Carl August Sandburg (January 6, 1878 – July 22, 1967) was an American poet, biographer, journalist, and editor. He won three Pulitzer Prizes: two for his poetry and one for his biography of Abraham Lincoln. During his lifetime, Sandburg ...
, who sang these songs, look like a bloody amateur. These people were poetic and musical and they had something terribly important to say.

Conjugal visits

Historically Mississippi State Penitentiary permitted imprisoned men to engage in conjugal visits with wives; conjugal visits had to be with married, opposite-sex couples. The

(MDOC) did not include couples of

common law marriage Common-law marriage, also known as non-ceremonial marriage, marriage, informal marriage, or marriage by habit and repute, is a legal framework where a couple may be considered married without having formally registered their relation as a civil ...

s in its definition of marriage that makes a couple eligible for conjugal visits. MSP prisoners of "A" and "B" custody levels were permitted to engage in conjugal visits if they had no rule violation reports in the previous six months leading to each conjugal visit. According to the decision of

, the MDOC commissioner, the entire Mississippi state prison system ended conjugal visits in February 2014. Epps stated that the possibility of creating single parents and the expenses were the reasons why conjugal visits ended. Formal records stating when conjugal visits began at MSP do not exist; Mississippi was the first state to allow conjugal visits to take place in its prisons. Columbus B. Hopper, author of ''The Evolution of Conjugal Visiting in Mississippi'' (1989), said "In all probability, conjugal visiting began as soon as Parchman Plantation was made into a prison in 1900" and "I traced it back definitely as early as 1918."Hopper 1989, p. 103. There was no state control or legal status for conjugal visits. Originally only African-American men were allowed to participate, as society believed that the sexual drives of black men were stronger than those of white men. Prison authorities believed that if black men were allowed to have sexual intercourse, they would be more productive in the farming industries of the prison. By the 1930s, the authorities had permitted white men to receive conjugal visits. Because the officials did not want pregnancies to occur in prison, at that time they did not permit female prisoners to have conjugal visits. In the 1930s, on Sunday afternoons, prostitutes visited Parchman and the prison camps. Hopper said that a prisoner's song referred to a prostitute charging 50 cents for her services, "not a small amount during the Great Depression when many people worked a 12-hour day for a dollar." Originally there were no facilities designated for conjugal visits. Some prisoners used tool sheds and storage areas in the camp areas, and others took their wives and girlfriends into the prisoner barracks and placed blankets over beds to allow for privacy. In 1940 prisoners began building special houses to be used by prisoners and their families during conjugal visits. In 1962, Hopper, in '' The Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology, and Police Science'', said that the Mississippi State Penitentiary had the most liberal visitation program in the United States.Hopper 1962, p. 341. Rules of visitation and leave, adopted in 1944, allowed inmates to make home visits for reasons other than emergency. According to a 1956 survey, it was the only correctional facility in the country to do so. Inmates were allowed to be visited every Sunday for two hours by their wives. In 1962, each Parchman camp, with the exception of the maximum-security camps, housed a five to ten-room structure called a red house; each house is near the main gate of the main camp building.Hopper 1962, pp. 340–341. In the house, the inmate and his wife may engage in sexual intercourse. Children are encouraged by the prison authorities to visit; as of 1962 one camp houses a play area for children. The Parchman conjugal visit program is designed so that all members of the family may interact with a particular prisoner. In 1962, the prison officials said that the conjugal visits were an important factor in preserving marriages of inmates and reducing prison homosexuality. During that year, most inmates reported favorable opinions about the conjugal program.

David Oshinsky David M. Oshinsky (born 1944) is an American historian. He is the director of the Division of Medical Humanities at NYU School of Medicine and a professor in the Department of History at New York University. Background Oshinsky graduated from C ...

, author of '' Worse than Slavery'', said that the statements regarding the preservation of marriages were "likely" to be correct and the statements regarding the prison sexuality were "probably" not true. Penologists stated that factors that may have contributed to the development of the system were the strength of family ties in rural areas. Parchman was "primarily an agricultural plantation that is a self-contained, sociocultural system functioning much as a culture in and of itself", the emphasis placed on agricultural production, and the small sizes of the camps. The guards in the camps knew the prisoners personally. Because of the lack of records, it was not possible to tell if the conjugal visit program reduced prison sexuality or recidivism. In the 1970s, Parchman still did not maintain records on the conjugal visits that took place at the facility. In 1972 women at Parchman became eligible for conjugal visits. In 1974, prisoners of both sexes were permitted to have three-day, two-night family visits. In the 1980s guards reported that inmates were more docile if they had periodic sexual access to their wives. Robert Cross of the ''

'' reported in 1985 that the MSP program received relatively little attention compared to newer and more limited conjugal visit policies in

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

Connecticut Connecticut () is the southernmost state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. Its capita ...

New Mexico ) , population_demonym = New Mexican ( es, Neomexicano, Neomejicano, Nuevo Mexicano) , seat = Santa Fe , LargestCity = Albuquerque , LargestMetro = Tiguex , OfficialLang = None , Languages = English, Spanish ( New Mexican), Navajo, Ke ...

, New York,

South Carolina )'' Animis opibusque parati'' ( for, , Latin, Prepared in mind and resources, links=no) , anthem = " Carolina";" South Carolina On My Mind" , Former = Province of South Carolina , seat = Columbia , LargestCity = Charleston , LargestMetro = ...

, and

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...

. Cross added that "The difference, perhaps, is that in Mississippi, where Parchman serves as the only penitentiary, nobody issued proclamations or opened up the matter for debate." As of 1996, a newly established Parchman unit used conjugal visits as a reward in a behavioral modification program and a typical married prisoner at Parchman had one conjugal visit every two weeks, and periodically used the family visits.

Literature

''Parchman'', a book by R. Kim Cushing, was published by the

. It includes stories written by 18 prisoners and multiple photographs. Reverend William Barnwell wrote in ''

'' that the book was "beautifully laid out" and portrays the prisoners "as fellow human beings, with their own strengths and weaknesses, like the rest of us. They — and we — deserve such a book." ''In Our Own Words: Writing from Parchman Prison – Unit 30'' and ''Unit 30 New Writings from Parchman Farm'' include stories written by inmates participating in a writing program at Unit 30. A total of 12 prisoners wrote content in the ''New Writings'' book, and four wrote content appearing in both books. The Mississippi Humanities Council gave a grant to the writing program, and the sales from the books also fund the writing program.

In popular culture

David Oshinsky, a historian, said in 1996 "Throughout the American South, Parchman Farm is synonymous with punishment and brutality ..." A character in

William Faulkner William Cuthbert Faulkner (; September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was an American writer known for his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, based on Lafayette County, Mississippi, where Faulkner spent most o ...

's '' The Mansion'' referred to MSP as "destination doom." John Buntin of ''

Governing Governance is the process of interactions through the laws, norms, power or language of an organized society over a social system ( family, tribe, formal or informal organization, a territory or across territories). It is done by the gove ...

'' magazine said that MSP "has long cast its shadow over the Mississippi Delta, including my hometown of

Greenville, Mississippi Greenville is a city in and the county seat of Washington County, Mississippi, United States. The population was 34,400 at the 2010 census. It is located in the area of historic cotton plantations and culture known as the Mississippi Delta. H ...

." The prison is the subject of a number of blues songs, most notably " Parchman Farm Blues" by

Bukka White Booker T. Washington "Bukka" White (November 12, 1906 February 26, 1977) was an American Delta blues guitarist and singer. Biography White was born south of Houston, Mississippi. He was a first cousin of B.B. King's mother (White's mother and ...

, and

Mose Allison Mose John Allison Jr. (November 11, 1927 – November 15, 2016) was an American jazz and blues pianist, singer, and songwriter. He became notable for playing a unique mix of blues and modern jazz, both singing and playing piano. After moving to N ...

's "

Parchman Farm Mississippi State Penitentiary (MSP), also known as Parchman Farm, is a maximum-security prison farm located in unincorporated Sunflower County, Mississippi, in the Mississippi Delta region. Occupying about of land,Bobbie Gentry Bobbie Gentry (born Roberta Lee Streeter; July 27, 1942) is a retired American singer-songwriter, who was one of the first female artists in America to compose and produce her own material. Gentry rose to international fame in 1967 with her Sou ...

, John Mayall,

Johnny Winter John Dawson Winter III (February 23, 1944 – July 16, 2014) was an American singer and guitarist. Winter was known for his high-energy blues rock albums and live performances in the late 1960s and 1970s. He also produced three Grammy Award-win ...

Georgie Fame Georgie Fame (born Clive Powell; 26 June 1943) is an English R&B and jazz musician. Fame, who had a string of 1960s hits, is still performing, often working with contemporaries such as Alan Price, Van Morrison and Bill Wyman. Fame is the on ...

Blue Cheer Blue Cheer was an American rock band that initially performed and recorded in the late 1960s and early 1970s and was sporadically active until 2009. Based in San Francisco, Blue Cheer played in a psychedelic blues rock or acid rock style, and ...

, and Blues Image. In 1963, the

Republican Republican can refer to: Political ideology * An advocate of a republic, a type of government that is not a monarchy or dictatorship, and is usually associated with the rule of law. ** Republicanism, the ideology in support of republics or agains ...

gubernatorial A governor is an administrative leader and head of a polity or political region, ranking under the head of state and in some cases, such as governors-general, as the head of state's official representative. Depending on the type of political ...

nominee A candidate, or nominee, is the prospective recipient of an award or honor, or a person seeking or being considered for some kind of position; for example: * to be elected to an office — in this case a candidate selection procedure occurs. * t ...

Rubel Phillips Rubel Lex Phillips (March 29, 1925 – June 18, 2011) was an American politician and lawyer. Growing up poor in Alcorn County, Mississippi, he served in the United States Navy during World War II and, upon returning, earned a law degree. Haili ...

made the penitentiary an issue in his unsuccessful campaign against the

Democrat Democrat, Democrats, or Democratic may refer to: Politics *A proponent of democracy, or democratic government; a form of government involving rule by the people. *A member of a Democratic Party: **Democratic Party (United States) (D) **Democratic ...

Paul B. Johnson Jr. Paul Burney Johnson Jr. (January 23, 1916October 14, 1985) was an American attorney and Democratic politician from Mississippi, serving as governor from 1964 until January 1968. He was a son of former Mississippi Governor Paul B. Johnson Sr. ...

Phillips called the institution at Parchman "a disgrace" and urged the establishment of a constitutional board "free of politics to exercise responsible leadership". Phillips recounted the case of inmate Kimble Berry, who served time for manslaughter who was granted leave in 1961 by acting Governor Johnson (while

was out of state) but showed up in a Cadillac in

Massachusetts Massachusetts (Massachusett: ''Muhsachuweesut Massachusett_writing_systems.html" ;"title="nowiki/> məhswatʃəwiːsət.html" ;"title="Massachusett writing systems">məhswatʃəwiːsət">Massachusett writing systems">məhswatʃəwiːsət'' En ...

claiming that he had been authorized to recover burglary loot. The prison also served as a major source of material for folklorists such as Alan and

John Lomax John Avery Lomax (September 23, 1867 – January 26, 1948) was an American teacher, a pioneering musicologist, and a folklorist who did much for the preservation of American folk music. He was the father of Alan Lomax, John Lomax Jr. and Bess Lo ...

, who visited numerous times to record

work song A work song is a piece of music closely connected to a form of work, either sung while conducting a task (usually to coordinate timing) or a song linked to a task which might be a connected narrative, description, or protest song. Definitions and ...

field holler The field holler or field call is mostly a historical type of vocal work song sung by field slaves in the United States (and later by African American forced laborers accused of violating vagrancy laws) to accompany their tasked work, to commun ...

s, blues, and interviews with prisoners. The Lomaxes in part focused on Parchman at that time because it offered a particular closed society shut off from the outside world. John Lomax, accompanied by his wife

Ruby A ruby is a pinkish red to blood-red colored gemstone, a variety of the mineral corundum ( aluminium oxide). Ruby is one of the most popular traditional jewelry gems and is very durable. Other varieties of gem-quality corundum are called ...

, toured through the southern states recording blues

work songs A work song is a piece of music closely connected to a form of work, either sung while conducting a task (usually to coordinate timing) or a song linked to a task which might be a connected narrative, description, or protest song. Definitions and ...

and other folk songs for the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library ...

as part of a

WPA WPA may refer to: Computing *Wi-Fi Protected Access, a wireless encryption standard *Windows Product Activation, in Microsoft software licensing * Wireless Public Alerting (Alert Ready), emergency alerts over LTE in Canada * Windows Performance An ...

project in 1939. They recorded work songs and

chants A chant (from French ', from Latin ', "to sing") is the iterative speaking or singing of words or sounds, often primarily on one or two main pitches called reciting tones. Chants may range from a simple melody involving a limited set of notes ...

while inmates were performing a group task, such as hoeing the fields at Parchman Farm as well as blues songs sung by inmate musicians. The Coen brothers' film, ''

O Brother, Where Art Thou? ''O Brother, Where Art Thou?'' is a 2000 comedy drama film written, produced, co-edited, and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. It stars George Clooney, John Turturro, and Tim Blake Nelson, with Chris Thomas King, John Goodman, Holly Hunter, and ...

'', makes reference to Parchman, both directly and by including a song on the

soundtrack A soundtrack is recorded music accompanying and synchronised to the images of a motion picture, drama, book, television program, radio program, or video game; a commercially released soundtrack album of music as featured in the soundtrack ...

that was recorded at Parchman in 1959 by Alan Lomax. In

's book '' Old Man'', which was also published as part of the book ''The Wild Palms'', the Tall and Fat Convicts were sent from Parchman to rescue folks from the

1927 Mississippi flood The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 was the most destructive river flood in the history of the United States, with inundated in depths of up to over the course of several months in early 1927. The uninflated cost of the damage has been estimate ...

. In Faulkner's '' The Mansion'', Mink Snopes was imprisoned in Parchman. In

August Wilson August Wilson ( Frederick August Kittel Jr.; April 27, 1945 – October 2, 2005) was an American playwright. He has been referred to as the "theater's poet of Black America". He is best known for a series of ten plays, collectively called ' (or ...

's play ''

The Piano Lesson ''The Piano Lesson'' is a 1987 play by American playwright August Wilson. It is the fourth play in Wilson's ''The Pittsburgh Cycle''. Wilson began writing this play by playing with the various answers regarding the possibility of "acquir nga se ...

'', the characters Boy Willie, Lymon, Doaker, and Wining Boy all served time at Parchman. The stage play ''The Parchman Hour'', by playwright Mike Wiley, is based on the following quote by a Freedom Rider imprisoned there in 1961: The play premiered professionally at

PlayMakers Repertory Company PlayMakers Repertory Company is the professional theater company in residence at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. PlayMakers Repertory Company is the successor of the Carolina Playmakers and is named after the Historic Playmakers T ...

in 2011. In 2013 it was produced for the second time at the Cape Fear Regional Theatre in Fayetteville, North Carolina, once again directed by Mike Wiley. '' The Chamber'' (1993), a best-selling novel by

John Grisham John Ray Grisham Jr. (; born February 8, 1955 in Jonesboro, Arkansas) is an American novelist, lawyer and former member of the 7th district of the Mississippi House of Representatives, known for his popular legal thrillers. According to the Ame ...

, is set at Parchman's Death Row. Many of Grisham's other novels make reference to the prison and in his book, '' Ford County'', the short story "Fetching Raymond" takes place in large part at Parchman. '' The Chamber'', the movie based on the novel, starring Gene Hackman and

Chris O'Donnell Christopher Eugene O'Donnell (born June 26, 1970) is an American actor and former model. He played Charlie Sims in '' Scent of a Woman'', Chris Reece in ''School Ties'', D'Artagnan in ''The Three Musketeers'', Jack Foley in the drama film '' ...

, was filmed at the penitentiary. The 1999 film ''

Life Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as Cell signaling, signaling and self-sustaining processes, from that which does not, and is defined by the capacity for Cell growth, growth, reaction to Stimu ...

'', portraying a group of bootleggers from New York who are falsely convicted of murder and are given life sentences, takes place at Parchman. While it is set in Mississippi, filming occurred in California.Cheseborough, Steve, ''Blues Traveling: The Holy Sites of Delta Blues''.

, 2004
96
Retrieved from

on September 29, 2010; , . In

Jesmyn Ward Jesmyn Ward (born April 1, 1977) is an American novelist and a Professor of English at Tulane University, where she holds the Andrew W. Mellon Professorship in the Humanities. She won the 2011 National Book Award for Fiction for her second novel ...

's ''

Sing, Unburied, Sing ''Sing, Unburied, Sing'' is the third novel by the American author Jesmyn Ward and published by Scribner in 2017. It focuses on a family in the fictional town of Bois Sauvage, Mississippi. The novel received overwhelmingly positive reviews, and ...

'', a young boy killed at Parchman Prison comes back to haunt the narrator, Jojo, and his family; nevertheless, they drive upstate to pick-up Michael, the father, who is just freed from the same prison. Parchman is mentioned and shown several times in '' In the Heat of the Night''. Parchman appears as a plot element in "A Trip Upstate", where Sparta's police chief, Bill Gillespie, visits a death row inmate and witnesses the inmate's execution.

Quotation

Notable people

Inmates

Death row prisoners

=Current

= * Richard Gerald Jordan

=Former

= *

Cory Maye Cory Jermaine Maye (born September 9, 1980) is a former prisoner in the U.S. state of Mississippi. He was originally convicted of murder in the 2001 death of a Prentiss, Mississippi police officer Ron W. Jones, during a drug raid on the other half ...

(Unit 32; released in 2011) *

Curtis Flowers Curtis Giovanni Flowers (born May 29, 1970) is an American man who was tried for murder six times in the U.S. state of Mississippi. Four of the trials resulted in convictions, all of which were overturned on appeal. Flowers was alleged to have ...

(previous, conviction vacated in 2019)

=Executed

= *

Jimmy Lee Gray Jimmy Lee Gray (September 25, 1948 – September 2, 1983) was an American criminal convicted for the kidnapping, sexual assault and murder of three-year-old Deressa Jean Scales in 1976. At the time of this murder, he was free on parole after se ...

(executed 1983) *

(executed 1987) *

John B. Nixon John B. Nixon Sr. (April 1, 1928 – December 14, 2005) was an American convicted murderer. He was convicted of the January 22, 1985 murder-for-hire of Virginia Tucker in Rankin County, Mississippi. Born in Midnight in Humphreys County, Mississip ...

(executed 2005) * Earl Wesley Berry (executed 2008)

Other prisoners

Samuel Bowers Samuel Holloway Bowers (August 25, 1924 – November 5, 2006) was a convicted murderer and a leading white supremacist in Mississippi during the Civil Rights Movement. He was Grand Dragon of the Mississippi Original Knights of the Ku Klux Kla ...

(died in the hospital unit) *

Stokely Carmichael Kwame Ture (; born Stokely Standiford Churchill Carmichael; June 29, 1941November 15, 1998) was a prominent organizer in the civil rights movement in the United States and the global pan-African movement. Born in Trinidad, he grew up in the Unite ...

McPherson, James N. "Parchman's Plantation". ''

''. April 28, 1996
2
Retrieved July 20, 2010. *

James Farmer James Leonard Farmer Jr. (January 12, 1920 – July 9, 1999) was an American civil rights activist and leader in the Civil Rights Movement "who pushed for nonviolent protest to dismantle segregation, and served alongside Martin Luther King Jr." ...

Son House Edward James "Son" House Jr. (March 21, 1902His date of birth is a matter of some debate. House alleged that he was middle-aged during World War I and that he was 79 in 1965, which would make his date of birth around 1886. However, all legal re ...

"Trail of the Hellhound: Delta Sites"
U.S. National Park Service. Retrieved July 23, 2010. * Edgar Ray Killen (Unit 31) * John Lewis * Vernon Elvis Presley * Carol Ruth Silver *

* Pearl High School shooting, Luke Woodham, Pearl High School shooter *Thomas A Tarrants III

Staff

, a guard in Unit 29, was promoted within the department, and was appointed as Deputy Superintendent of Parchman in 1998. In 2002 he was appointed as Commissioner of MDOC. In 2014 he was indicted on federal charges for bribery and corruption. On May 25, 2017, he was given a federal prison sentence of 235 months (19.6 years).

References

* Raymond Arsenault, Arsenault, Raymond (2006). ''Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice''. Oxford: Oxford University Press. * David Fankhauser, Fankhauser, David. "Freedom Rides". U.C. Clermont Biology. N.p., Jan 27, 201
Biology.clc.uc.edu
* James Farmer, Farmer, James (1998). ''Lay Bare the Heart: An Autobiography of the Civil Rights Movement''. Texas Christian University Press. * * Available at SAGE Journals, ISSN 0032-8855 * Jeff Klinkenberg, Klinkenberg, Jeff. "Courage and Convictions". Tampabay.com. N.p., March 3, 2006
Sptimes.com
* David Oshinsky, Oshinsky, David M. (1997). ''Worse Than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice''. Free Press.
Jay-Z, Yo Gotti help 150 inmates at Mississippi prison sue over "barbaric" conditions

Footnotes

External links

The second entry refers to the Mississippi State Penitentiary and lists its statistics as well as programs.
"Digital Collections: Alan Lomax"
University of Mississippi.
"Parchman Farm

History of capital punishment in Mississippi including pictures of how capital punishment took and takes place; it also lists references.
* Winter, Margaret and Stephen F. Hanlon
"Parchman Farm Blues: Pushing for Prison Reforms at Mississippi State Penitentiary"

Archive
''

''.
Chain gang songs from Parchman Farm

Worse Than Slavery": Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice
*
"The Conjugal Visit at Mississippi State Penitentiary"
JSTOR
"Worse Than Slavery"
''

'' {{Authority control Prisons in Mississippi Agricultural labor in the United States Buildings and structures in Sunflower County, Mississippi Capital punishment in Mississippi Women's prisons in the United States Mississippi Blues Trail Execution sites in the United States 1901 establishments in Mississippi