Digital Snapshots

If it is true that “To understand the world, you must first understand a place like Mississippi,”1then we might add thatto understand Mississippi, you must first understand a place like Parchman. The Mississippi State Penitentiary, known as Parchman, looms large in America’s imagination. Through the literature of Mississippi authors like William Faulkner and Jesmyn Ward, through the Blues and field chants, and even through films like the Coen brothers’ O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), Parchman has played a major role in constructing the public memory of racism and incarceration. 

The “prison without walls” in Sunflower County spans nearly 20,000 acres of fertile Mississippi Delta soil. For most of the 20th century, inmates at Parchman worked six days a week -- “from before you could see until you couldn’t see”2 -- and were expected to pick at least 200 pounds of cotton each day [hyperlink photo 97283]. They labored under constant threat of violence from the lash, known as “Black Annie,” and the “trusty-shooters,” fellow convicts armed with shotguns. Malnourishment, sunstroke, and exhaustion were common. It was the “quintessential prison farm,” in the words of historian David Oshinsky: a place where the plantation system persisted as if unchanged until the 1970s, a place that seems to symbolize the continued legacy of America’s undeniable association between race-based enslavement and incarceration.3 As Jesmyn Ward writes in Sing, Unburied, Sing,her haunting novel about the ghosts of Parchman, “It’s like a snake that sheds its skin. The outside look different when the scales change, but the inside always the same.”4  

Yet Parchman, like everything, has a history: After emancipation, southern states turned to “convict leasing” as a first, disorganized attempt to regain control of Black labor. The 13th amendment abolished slavery, “except as a punishment for crime.” This fateful escape clause led to the criminalization and forced labor of thousands of recently emancipated people across the south. New “Black Codes” were passed to ensnare Black southerners. States like Mississippi then rented these newfound convicts by the hundreds to the highest (or the most politically-connected) bidder. Thousands died of disease, overwork, and malnourishment, as they cleared the swamps, built the railroads, and laid the bricks of the post-Civil War “New South.” By the early 20th century, convict leasing came under sustained attack both for humanitarian reasons and for economic reasons (as other owners and laborers resented having to compete against artificially cheap labor). Parchman Prison, a state-run plantation, first came into being in 1901 as a reform.  

The hallmark of Parchman’s system, which enabled it to operate with minimal staff and turn a profit, was its use of “trusties” -- privileged inmates -- to discipline the incarcerated population. There were cage bosses who maintained order, sometimes violently, in the tightly-packed barracks by night; dog-boys who trained the bloodhounds to hunt escapees; and trusty-shooters, who patrolled the fields and shot anyone who tried to run. Trusty-shooters -- often chosen intentionally from among the most violent, intimidating criminals -- could earn a pardon for the “meritorious service” of shooting an escaping fellow prisoner.5 Other trusties worked in the home of Parchman’s superintendent [hyperlink to photo 97248] or even at the Governor’s mansion in Jackson. In a paternalistic tradition that lasted into the 21st century, Mississippi Governors at the end of their term would pardon their trusty-servants, in recognition of these men’s willingness to conform to white supremacist stereotypes of the “loyal” Black domestic.6  

But Parchman residents did not just endure abuses. They created and sang songs that helped the days pass. They wrote, illustrated, and edited the longstanding prison newspaper Inside World.On Sundays, they held church services together (outdoors if necessary), gambled, played baseball and other games. Once every several months, they eagerly awaited the arrival of the “Midnight Special” train from Jackson, carrying their wives and children. Musicians in Parchman’s bands toured and performed at events around the state. Many Parchman residents even received permission for Christmas furloughs and other trips (and came back again).7 For residents, these visits were a chance to feel a sense of normalcy and community with the free world.  

Parchman also witnessed the heroism of the Civil Rights movement, as a site of punishment and of resistance: from Clyde Kennard, the Korean War veteran who was sent to Parchman in 1960 as retribution for trying to enroll at the University of Southern Mississippi8, to the Freedom Riders who were rounded up in Jackson in 1961 and packed off to Parchman’s new Maximum Security Unit. Kennard, despite being refused treatment for colon cancer and virtually worked to death in Parchman’s fields, spent his Sundays teaching and writing letters for other inmates. The Freedom Riders, though having their mattresses taken away and being sprayed with firehoses in their cells, continued to taunt their jailers with freedom songs. Mississippi officials hoped that imprisoning activists at Parchman would discipline them back into “their place.” Instead, activists emerged energized, with the sense that they had endured the worst the Jim Crow South had to offer. Ironically, subjecting hundreds of not just Mississippian activists but also out-of-state Freedom Riders to Parchman brought the nationwide Civil Rights movement inside the prison. In 1972, Nazareth Gates and three other Parchman residents brought a class action lawsuit against the superintendent. Gates v. Collier put an end to the use of trusty-shooters, racial segregation, whippings, and other abuses.  

And yet, even as the Civil Rights Movement reached its peak and Parchman’s most obvious continuities with the plantation system were coming to an end, the United States embarked on a new, frenetic path to mass incarceration. Fueled by a “law and order” backlash against the Civil Rights and Prisoners’ Rights movements, and by the misplaced and punitive policies of the “War on Drugs,” the US incarceration rate skyrocketed to 2 million people over the next three decades. Mississippi’s prison population grew from around 3,000 to over 20,000, and Parchman was joined by numerous other state and regional correctional facilities.9 In this new, punitive atmosphere, practices that once encouraged rehabilitation -- like pardons, furloughs, and other exchanges between inside and outside -- dwindled.  

The contemporary history of Parchman has brought attempts at reform along with new risks to inmate wellbeing. Although the trusty system was abolished, Mississippi has failed to replace it with sufficient investment in correctional workers. Chronic understaffing makes it difficult to curb contraband smuggling and inmate violence.10 While the end of exhausting workdays in the field and the end of segregation represent progress, some observers have suggested that these reforms also contributed to increased idle time and increased social tensions. Parchman has been plagued by gang-related violence, for example in the prison riots of 1995 and 2020, and in spates of unsolved killings.  

Today, Parchman Farm grows soybeans for export as well as food for its own residents and other state correctional facilities.11 Although many residents today still work in the fields, others work in the metal, textile, or print shops of MAGCOR Industries, a nonprofit that claims to offer “real work experiences that prepare individuals for success after incarceration.”12 Parchman-made benches, trash receptacles, and mattresses may be used by students every day on Mississippi’s college and university campuses. Parchman residents themselves have increasingly gained access to educational opportunities, taking courses through the University of Mississippi’s “Prison-to-College Pipeline” or through Mississippi Delta Community College; others participate in literary book clubs sponsored by the Mississippi Humanities Council. Numerous Parchman residents have earned degrees from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, as part of the “Field Minister” program that empowers residents to mentor each other in the Christian faith. The Parchman Band is once again performing beyond the prison’s walls. Perhaps the day is coming when Parchman residents will be seen as they are -- as neighbors and community members who, once they have served their time, deserve a chance at restoration and flourishing in the free world.  

Works Consulted and Additional Reading: 

Cabana, Donald A. Death at Midnight: The Confession of an Executioner. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1996.  

Hillyer, Reiko. A Wall is Just a Wall: The Permeability of the Prison in the Twentieth-Century United States. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2024.  

Innocence Staff. “The Lasting Legacy of Parchman Farm, the Prison Modeled After a Slave Plantation.” The Innocence Project. May 29, 2020. https://innocenceproject.org/the-lasting-legacy-of-parchman-farm-the-prison-modeled-after-a-slave-plantation/ (accessed 1/29/2025).  

Minchin, Timothy J. and John A. Salmond. “‘The Saddest Story of the Whole Movement’: The Clyde Kennard Case and the Search for Racial Reconciliation in Mississippi, 1955–2007,” in The Journal of Mississippi History, Volume 71, No. 3, Fall 2009.  

Oshinksy, David M. “Worse Than Slavery”: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice. New York: Free Press Paperbacks, 1996.  

Taylor, William Banks. Brokered Justice: Race, Politics, and Mississippi Prisons, 1798-1992. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1993.  

Taylor, William Banks. Down on Parchman Farm: The Great Prison in the Mississippi Delta. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1999.  

Ward, Jesmyn. Sing, Unburied, Sing. Scribner, 2017.