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. Inmates work on the prison farm (formerly plantation) and in manufacturing workshops.

It holds male offenders classified at all custody levels — A and B custody (minimum and medium security) and C and D custody (maximum security). It also houses death row — all male offenders sentenced to death in Mississippi are held here.^[1]

1 History
2 In culture
3 Quotation
4 See also
5 References
6 Footnotes
7 External links

[edit] History

In 1895-1906 it was transformed to fit state's penal plantation system.

Vernon Presley, father of Elvis Presley, was convicted of forgery when Elvis was three and received a three-year sentence at Parchman.^[2] The first photo of Elvis was taken at the prison in 1938 when, as a 3-year-old, he and his mother Gladys Presley came to visit his father. The photo shows Vernon, Elvis, and Gladys together against a wall inside the prison.

In the spring of 1961, Freedom Riders (civil rights activists) 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 and 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 in Parchman from 1969 to 1971. Four Parchman inmates brought a suit against the prison superintendent in federal district court in 1972, alleging their civil rights under the United States Constitution were being violated by the infliction of cruel and unusual punishment.^[3] In the case, Gates v. Collier, 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.^[4]^[5]

The 1987 BBC Television landmark documentary Fourteen Days in May, which followed the last two weeks of the life of Edward Earl Johnson up until just a few minutes before his execution in the prison's gas chamber, was filmed here.

[edit] In culture

A number of bluesmen have been imprisoned in Parchman Farm and the prison features in a number of blues songs such as "Parchman Farm".

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 flood.

In Faulkner's The Mansion, Mink Snopes was imprisoned in Parchman.

In August Wilson's The Piano Lesson, the characters Boy Willie, Lymon, Doaker, and Wining Boy all served time at Parchman. The Chamber, a movie based on the best-selling novel by John Grisham, was filmed at the penitentiary. The movie stars Gene Hackman and Chris O'Donnell. Bo Jackson has a cameo as a prison guard.

[edit] Quotation

Oh listen you men, I don't mean no harm

If you wanna do good, you better stay off old Parchman Farm

We got to work in the mornin', just at dawn of day

Just at the settin' of the sun, that's when the work is done

Bukka White, "Parchman Farm Blues"

[edit] See also

[edit] References

Hopper, Columbus B. (September 1962). "The Conjugal Visit at Mississippi State Penitentiary". The Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology, and Police Science 53 (3): 340-343. doi:10.2307/1141470.
Oshinsky, David M.: Worse Than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice. Free Press, 1997.