Mississippi State Penitentiary
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Mississippi State Penitentiary, also known as Parchman Farm, is the oldest prison and the only maximum security prison in the state of Mississippi, USA. It is located on 18,000 acres (73 km²) in Parchman, Mississippi, and was built in 1901. It has beds for 4,840 inmates and houses all male offenders sentenced to death in Mississippi. Inmates work on the prison farm and in manufacturing workshops.
There are a number of blues songs written about Parchman Farm and several Blues musicians were imprisoned there, including Leadbelly, Bukka White (who wrote "Parchman Farm Blues"), and Eddie 'Son' House.
It is known for the part it played in the United States Civil Rights Movement. In the spring of 1961, Freedom Riders (civil rights workers) came to the American South to test the desegregation of public facilities. By the end of June, 163 Freedom Riders had been convicted in Jackson, Mississippi. Many were jailed in Parchman.
In 1970 the Civil Rights lawyer Roy Haber began taking statements from inmates, which eventually ran to fifty pages of details of murders, rapes, beatings and other abuses suffered by the inmates from 1969 to 1971. The prison was renovated in 1972 after a scathing ruling by Judge Keady in which he wrote that the prison 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 system of 'trusties' (where lifers were armed with rifles and set to guard other inmates) was abolished.
The Chamber, a movie based on the eponymous best-selling novel by John Grisham, was filmed at the penitentiary.
Sources
- Oshinsky, David M. Worse Than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice. Free Press, 1997.
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