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MISSISSIPPI STATE PENITENTIARY AT PARCHMAN (1901 – )

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MISSISSIPPI STATE PENITENTIARY AT PARCHMAN (1901 – )

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Michael Cai and Alicia Ache

"It was originally comprised of three separate farms: a small farm, maintained by white convicts, a smaller one, farmed by women (mostly black), and a huge sprawling plantation for the prison’s black convicts who were the vast majority of the inmates."

"White composed his famous “Parchman Farm Blues,” which warned young men about the horror of the prison."

"In his 1972 decision he called for an immediate end to the unequal treatment of black inmates at Parchman, who made up two-thirds of the prison population."

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The Lasting Legacy of Parchman, the Prison Modeled After a Slave Plantation

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The Lasting Legacy of Parchman, the Prison Modeled After a Slave Plantation

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Joshua
-“The best workforce and the cheapest workforce they could get were convicts who were being arrested for largely minor offenses and then leased out for $9 a month.”
-“not a single leased convict ever lived long enough to serve a sentence of ten years or more,”
-“Convicts dropped from exhaustion, pneumonia, malaria, frostbite, consumption, sunstroke, dysentery, gunshot wounds, and ‘shackle poisoning’ (the constant rubbing of chains and leg irons against bare flesh),”

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"The best workforce and the cheapest workforce they could get were convicts who were being arrested for largely minor offenses and then leased out for $9 a month."

The purchase is a rich tract of virgin soil and the members of the board feel confident that when placed in proper condition it will make prolific yields."

"The plantation owners, as best they could, wanted blacks to return to the same place as they had been as slaves,"

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Reannah and Shreya
- "Approximately twice the number of blacks are required to live in the same amount of dormitory space as white inmates..."
- "It used slave labor long after emancipation; it perpetuated segregation long after the Civil Rights Act; and violence has long been commonplace."
-"The court found that at least six severely psychotic prisoners were treated with indifference and neglect, left to "scream at night, throw feces, and generally make life miserable for the inmates."

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- "'There were two reasons for Parchman,' Oshinsky said 'One was money-making and the other was racial control. They went hand in hand.'"
- "Corporal punishment was administered by and according to the whims of the "trusties," armed inmates drawn from the ranks of Parchman's most violent offenders who were empowered by prison officials to brutally maintain order."
- "'When it gets wore out on that side, you just flip it over," Brewer said. And then after a while, you flip back.'"

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End of Mississippi's Notorious Supermax Unit

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End of Mississippi's Notorious Supermax Unit

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Aviyonna and Tobi

"It is truly a wretched place that cannot be made environmentally adequate."

"Prisoners weren't provided clean water, soap, and other basic cleaning supplies."

"The death row prisoners described profound isolation, unrelieved idleness and monotony, denial of exercise, intolerable stench and pervasive filth, grossly malfunctioning plumbing, and constant exposure to human excrement."

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Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman

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Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman

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Sindhoora and Aoife
"Modeled after an antebellum slave plantation, its three founding principles were: the prison must profit at any cost, armed inmates were effective, low-cost, guards, and corporal punishment was an acceptable means of control."
"In 1904 the Mississippi Department of Corrections implemented a policy of leasing its prisoners to private businesses who needed cheap labor."
" In his 1972 decision he called for an immediate end to the unequal treatment of black inmates at Parchman, who made up two-thirds of the prison population."

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Mug shots of some of the more than 300 Freedom Riders who were arrested in Mississippi during the summer of 1961

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Lavanya and Taylor
"While the 13th Amendment abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, it carved out a loophole that allowed for the exploitation of incarcerated people, who were then and now, disproportionately black"

" After several visits, Keady declared that Parchman was “an affront to modern standards of decency” and the living conditions were “unfit for human habitation.”

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MISSISSIPPI STATE PENITENTIARY AT PARCHMAN (1901 – )

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MISSISSIPPI STATE PENITENTIARY AT PARCHMAN (1901 – )

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Gabriel and Julian
"Prisoners picked cotton from dawn to dusk and built tunnels using dynamite. Modeled after an antebellum slave plantation, its three founding principles were: the prison must profit at any cost, armed inmates were effective, low-cost, guards, and corporal punishment was an acceptable means of control."

"...David Oshinsky chronicles the history of Parchman Farm, which he describes as “…the closest thing to slavery that survived the civil war.” According to Oshinsky, Parchman’s past contains evidence that inmates were stabbed, raped, beaten, and systematically abused by being forced at gunpoint to labor until exhaustion in the cotton and soybean fields."

"The court found that: twice the number of blacks were required to live in the same amount of dormitory space as white inmates, black inmates were subjected to greater punishment or more severe discipline than white inmates for similar infractions, and that the prison practiced racial segregation, contrary to the law of the United States."

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People Keep Dying in Mississippi Prisons, But The Governor Wants to Move On

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People Keep Dying in Mississippi Prisons, But The Governor Wants to Move On

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Jacky and Evelyn
- “I wanna thank those brothers behind the walls that had the courage to let the world know of the injustices,” Brown said. “To let the world know that they are beaten, broken, tired.”
- A case manager had said that he was OK, but she had not heard from him in weeks. “He’s always told me, from the time he’s been at Parchman, ‘Mama, if you don’t hear from me, there’s something wrong with me.’"
-According to the Mississippi Department of Corrections, 49-year-old Thomas Lee was found hanging in his cell that morning, inside Parchman’s Unit 29. This brought the death tally to 10 in less than a month.

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Amar and Sahil
- “We knew he was innocent,” Gloria says, “that he couldn’t have done what they said.” Brooks spent 15 years at Parchman before being exonerated.
- The system was synonymous with violence and brutality, a murderous industry considered “slavery by another name.”
- People incarcerated there labored sunup to sundown, sometimes 15 hours a day in 100 degrees Fahrenheit, on Parchman’s 20,000-acre plantation, planting, picking cotton, and plowing fields under the control of armed guards.

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Katie, Celeste, and Hailey
~ "'There were two reasons for Parchman,' Oshinsky said 'One was money-making and the other was racial control. They went hand in hand.'"
~ "News broke in The Clarion Ledger on December 17, 1900, under a headline that read, 'NEW CONVICT FARM.'"
~ "A federal judge ruled that the conditions on death row constituted cruel and unusual punishment. Cells were filthy — crusted with food scraps, covered in raw sewage from backed-up toilets and flooded by rain water. In the summer, the unit was also plagued by extreme heat and mosquitoes."

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Deaths continue in Mississippi Prisons, But the Governor wants to move on 

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Deaths continue in Mississippi Prisons, But the Governor wants to move on 

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"His face is skin and bones. His neck and chest bones are sticking out." This shows that the healthcare in the prisons is not up to date.                  The shirt says fix your prison but if you take the "Y" out of "Your" it says "Fix our prison ". In a way if this person has a family member in prison they are saying to fix the prisons for themselves.        "At a vigil outside Parchman on January 11, she described how the toilet in her son’s cell had been broken for months, forcing him to urinate and defecate in plastic bags." This is a ongoing problem that affects the sanitation of the prison.