Mississippi State Penitentiary

For much of the 1900's after the American Civil War, the state of Mississippi used a convict lease 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 appropriated US$80,000 for the purchase of the Parchman Plantation, a property in Sunflower County. What is now the prison property was located at a railroad spur called "Gordon Station". Founding the Mississippi State Penitentiary (1901) The state of Mississippi purchased land in Sunflower County in January 1901 to establish a state prison. In 1901 four stockades were constructed, and the state moved prisoners to begin clearing land for crop cultivation. 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. The Mississippi Department of Archives and History says that MSP "was in many ways reminiscent of a gigantic antebellum plantation and operated on the basis of a plan proposed by Governor John M. Stone in 1896". Prisoners worked as laborers in its operations. Originally, Parchman was one of two prisons designated for black men, with the other prisons housing other racial and gender groups. In 1909, the State of Mississippi acquired adjacent to the MSP territory, resulting in MDOC having in the Mississippi Delta. In 1916, MDOC bought the O'Keefe Plantation in Quitman County, near Lambert. Originally this plantation was a separate institution, the Lambert Farm. 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 called for a special session of the Mississippi Legislature to discuss the application of the death penalty. Parchman Farm and the Freedom Riders (1961) In the spring of 1961, Freedom Riders went to the American South to work for desegregation of public facilities serving interstate transportation, as segregation of such facilities and buses had been declared unconstitutional. 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, Ross Barnett, 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 and many were jailed in Parchman. 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. "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." 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. 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 their cells for the most part with little to do. They reportedly enthusiastically sang Freedom Songs, mostly direct descendants of slave spirituals. They made up songs to fit their new place. As the 45 Riders struggled in prison, many others were heading South to join the Freedom Rides. Winonah Myers 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. The riders' experiences at Parchman gave the Freedom Riders credibility in the Civil Rights Movement. 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. 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 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". When the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility (CMCF) opened in January 1986, all women who were incarcerated at MSP were moved to the new facility. The BBC filmed Fourteen Days in May (1987) at Parchman. The documentary followed the last two weeks of the life of Edward Earl Johnson, who was executed in the prison's gas chamber. In 1997, several prison guards were arrested, accused of illegally interfering with prisoner mail. On March 18, 1998, the legislature made another amendment: removing the gas chamber as a method of execution. he was believed to have been traveling with his wife. The escapee and his wife were captured in San Diego, California 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. 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. Due to the installation of the system, between August 6, 2010 and September 9, 2010, more than 216,320 texts and calls were blocked. 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. 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 regarding "inhumane and dangerous conditions" at the prison. A Federal Department of Justice Civil Rights investigation began 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 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. The road from the front entrance to the back entrance stretches . 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." "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. The main entrance, a metal gate with "Mississippi State Penitentiary" in large letters, on the west side of 49W. Passersby are not permitted to stop to photograph buildings at the Parchman main entrance. 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. The prison facility is located near the northern border of Sunflower County. The City of Drew is south of MSP, Parchman is south of Tutwiler, about south of Memphis, Tennessee, Throughout MSP's history, it was referred to as "the prison without walls" due to the dispersed camps within its property. 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. A potential escapee could wander for days without leaving the MSP property. As of 1971, guards patrol MSP on horseback instead of on foot. The prison offered conjugal visits until February 1, 2014. Inmate housing units Six units currently house prisoners. Units that currently function as inmate housing include: • 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. • 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 houses all male death row inmates in MDOC. Renovations occurred in 1998, including the conversion of dormitory units into cell units. 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 grant money. Unit 29-A houses the A&D Treatment Program for Special Needs program, which is for prisoners with HIV/AIDS who are more than 6 months and within 30 months of their release dates. In 2020 J Building (one of 5 Buildings making up Unit 29) was partially closed due to deterioration. It was designed by Dale and Associates. 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. The unit includes a 12-week alcohol and drug program based on principles of Alcoholics Anonymous. was the designated unit of housing for maximum security and death row convicts. and Unit 32 served as MSP's lockdown unit. • The U32 housing facility has five two story housing facilities, a recreation building, and external structures such as guntowers. 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 B (Bravo Building) also housed closed custody prisoners. 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. In 2020, MDOC re-opened Unit 32 despite prisoner complaints of poor conditions. • Unit 42 • Unit 42, the prison hospital, has 54 beds. 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". • Unit 15, Building B • Unit 16 • The unit, with a capacity of 68 people, was built in the 1970s for $3,000,000. 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. • 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. • In 1961, the State of Mississippi incarcerated Freedom Riders in the unit. 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. In 2010 MDOC Commissioner Chris Epps 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. In 2007 three inmates in Unit 32 were murdered by other inmates in a several month span. During that year a guard at Unit 32 said that under-staffing contributed to the security lapses. 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. 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. As of 2002, the internal audit building, 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 for elementary, Drew Hunter Middle School in Drew, and Thomas E. Edwards Sr. High School (formerly Ruleville Central High School) in Ruleville. Residents were previously zoned to the Drew School District, and children who lived on the grounds of MSP attended A.W. James Elementary School and Drew Hunter High School in Drew. Prior to the 2010–11 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, 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 Delta Democrat Times article (circa November 1974), 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, author of Silver Rights, stated 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 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 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) numbers one and two are the institution's sewage treatment plants. The United States Postal Service operates the Parchman Post Office along Parchman Road 12/Mississippi Highway 32 inside the prison property. Mississippi State Penitentiary has a dedicated fire department,) a wastewater treatment plant, road crews, utility crews, a grocery store, and a hospital. 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. Around 1911, prisoners who developed chronic illnesses were sent from MSP to the Oakley prison. was isolated from the male camps. An enclave within the camp was reserved for white inmates. Around 1968, Camp B was one of the largest African-American camps of MSP. Camp B was located in unincorporated 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." 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." , U.S. Geological Survey, July 1, 1988 After the 1972 Gates v. Collier federal judge ruling, After Central Mississippi Correctional Facility opened, the women were moved out of Camp 25. In the 1990s, MSP had 6,800 prisoners; 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. The Internal Audit building, located along Guard Row, was destroyed in a fire in 2002. 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 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 Mississippi Department of Corrections-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 had about 998 free employees. In 1971, the prison employed fewer than 75 free employees because trusties performed many tasks at Parchman. The free employees included administrative, medical, and support employees. ==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 added that "idleness" was an issue facing many other prisons. Throughout MSP's history, most prisoners have worked in the fields. On Sundays prisoners attended religious services and participated in baseball games, with teams formed on the basis of the camps. 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. "Trustee shooters" wore vertical stripes. 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. 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. 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." Musical traditions While living at MSP, many African-American inmates sang work chants, a tradition traced to West Africa. 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. The Mississippi Blues Trail added Parchman to its list of sites at 10 AM on Tuesday September 28, 2010; Parchman received the trail's 113th historical marker. Folk song collectors John 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 look like a child. They made Carl Sandburg, who sang these songs, look like a bloody amateur. These people were poetic and musical and they had something terribly important to say. In 2023, music producer Ian Brennan recorded inmates singing in the prison chapel and released the recordings on the album Some Mississippi Sunday Morning under the name Parchman Prison Prayer. Brennan returned and recorded more performances in February 2024, which were released as Another Mississippi Sunday Morning in January 2025. 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 Mississippi Department of Corrections (MDOC) did not include couples of common-law marriages 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. 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." 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. As 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 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. 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. 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. David Oshinsky said the statements regarding the preservation of marriages were "likely" to be correct and the statements regarding the prison sexuality were "probably" not true. the emphasis placed on agricultural production, and the small sizes of the camps. The guards in the camps knew the prisoners personally. Due to 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 the 1980s guards reported that inmates were more docile if they had periodic sexual access to their wives. Robert Cross of the Chicago Tribune reported in 1985 that the MSP program received relatively little attention compared to newer and more limited conjugal visit policies in California, Connecticut, New Mexico, New York, South Carolina, and Washington. 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." The Parchman Animal Care & Training (PACT) program, which was established in April 2008, organizes inmate care of livestock. ==Literature==

Parchman, a book by R. Kim Cushing, was published by the University Press of Mississippi. It includes stories written by 18 prisoners and multiple photographs. Reverend William Barnwell wrote in The Clarion-Ledger 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. “Worse Than Slavery” Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice by David M. Oshinsky. Free Press Paperbacks 1997 ==In popular culture==

David Oshinsky said in 1996, "Throughout the American South, Parchman Farm is synonymous with punishment and brutality...the closest thing to slavery that survived the Civil War." This is quoted in 2014 Atlantic article "The Case for Reparations" by journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates. A character in William Faulkner's The Mansion referred to MSP as "destination doom." The prison also served as a major source of material for folklorists such as Alan and John Lomax, who visited numerous times to record work songs, field hollers, 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, toured through the southern states recording blues work songs and other folk songs for the Library of Congress as part of a WPA project in 1939. They recorded work songs and chants 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?, makes reference to Parchman, both directly and by including a song on the soundtrack that was recorded at Parchman in 1959 by Alan Lomax. In William Faulkner'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. In Faulkner's The Mansion, Mink Snopes was imprisoned in Parchman. In August Wilson's play The Piano Lesson, 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 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, 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, was filmed at the penitentiary. The 1999 film Life, 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. In Jesmyn Ward's Sing, Unburied, Sing, 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==

Inmates Death row prisoners Current • Willie Cory Godbolt, perpetrator of the 2017 Mississippi shootings • Martez Terrell Abram, perpetrator of the 2019 Southaven Walmart shooting Former • Cory Maye (Unit 32; released in 2011) • Curtis Flowers (previous, conviction vacated in 2019) • Roger Lee Gillett (death sentence commuted to life without parole) – convicted alongside Lisa Jo Chamberlin in the murders of Vernon Hulett and Linda Heintzelman. Transferred to Marshall County Correctional Facility in 2024. Executed • Jimmy Lee Gray (executed 1983) • Edward Earl Johnson (executed 1987) • Richard Gerald Jordan (executed 2025) • Charles Ray Crawford (executed 2025) • John B. Nixon (executed 2005) • Earl Wesley Berry (executed 2008) • David Neal Cox (executed 2021) • Thomas Edwin Loden Jr. (executed 2022) Other prisoners • Samuel Bowers (died in the hospital unit) • Stokely Carmichael • James Farmer • Edgar Ray Killen (Unit 31) • John Lewis • Vernon Elvis Presley • Carol Ruth Silver • Bukka White • Thomas A Tarrants III Staff • Chris Epps, 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). ==See also==