Digital Snapshots
Mississippi State Penitentiary (Parchman)
This “Digital Snapshot” Exhibit features items from two digitized collections—the Mississippi State Penitentiary (Parchman) Photo Collections and the Parchman (Mississippi State Penitentiary) Photograph Booklet. Parchman is in Sunflower County in the Mississippi Delta. Since it first opened in 1901, “Parchman Farm” has largely been a prison or penal farm where imprisoned individuals were forced to work, primarily in agriculture and livestock, logging, or industrial labor.
Items from the Mississippi State Penitentiary (Parchman) Photo Collections are primarily from the early-twentieth century and demonstrate the labor performed by incarcerated people and the conditions in which they labored. The items from the Parchman (Mississippi State Penitentiary) Photograph Booklet date to the mid-twentieth century when Parchman upgraded technologies and mechanics to better support agricultural labor and output at the facility.
This program is funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities through the Mississippi Humanities Council.
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About the Mississippi Prison System & Parchman
Read a contextual essay and access secondary sources about the Mississippi prison system and Parchman (Mississippi State Penitentiary).
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Snapshot Exhibit
Browse exhibits featuring photographs of Parchman (Mississippi State Penitentiary).
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Educator Resources
Access K-12 activities based on sources in this Snapshot.
Cite images/documents according to the following structure:
Original Creator, “Title,” Unique Resource Identifier, Series Number and Title, Archival Repository, image/document URL.
Example:
“Parchman, Miss. Photograph Collection, Item 6; 19xx,” 97254_photo, PI/PEN/P37.4: Mississippi State Penitentiary (Parchman) Photo Collections, Mississippi Department of Archives and History, https://da.mdah.ms.gov/series/parchman/detail/22759.
Suggested bibliographic citation format for items in this exhibit: