Mississippi State Penitentiary (MSP), also known as Parchman Farm, is a maximum-security prison farm located in the unincorporated community of Parchman in Sunflower County, Mississippi, in the Mississippi Delta region. Occupying about of land,"State Prisons" . Mississippi Department of Corrections. Retrieved January 14, 2011."MDOC Quick Reference". Mississippi Department of Corrections. Retrieved May 21, 2010. Parchman is the only maximum security prison for men in the state of Mississippi, and is the state's oldest prison.
Begun with four stockades in 1901, the Mississippi Department of Corrections facility was constructed largely by state prisoners. It has beds for 4,840 inmates. Inmates work on the prison farm 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 the male death row—all male offenders sentenced to death in Mississippi state courts are held in MSP's Unit 29—and the state execution chamber. The superintendent of Mississippi State Penitentiary is Marshall Turner. There are two wardens, three deputy wardens, and two associate wardens.
Female prisoners are not usually assigned to MSP; Central Mississippi Correctional Facility, also the location of the female death row, was for a time the only state prison in Mississippi designated as a place for female prisoners.
History
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."A Brief History of the Mississippi Department of Corrections" . Mississippi Department of Corrections. Retrieved September 18, 2010. What is now the prison property was located at a railroad spur called "Gordon Station".Yardley, Jonathan. "In the Fields of Despair", The Washington Post, March 31, 1996. Retrieved March 1, 2011. "The eventual replacement for convict leasing was Parchman Farm, a 20,000-acre tract in the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta, 90 miles south of Memphis at a dilapidated railroad spur known as 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."Mississippi State Penitentiary (Parchman) Photo Collections" . Mississippi Department of Archives and History. Retrieved August 12, 2010. In 1901 four stockades were constructed, and the state moved prisoners to begin clearing land for crop cultivation. The land was undeveloped Mississippi Delta bottomland and forest, fertile but dense with undergrowth and trees."Article 14 -- No Title": "Convicts Who Are In Demand After Serving Terms". (Direct article link) The New York Times. Retrieved August 14, 2010.
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.Cabana, Donald A. "The History of Capital Punishment in Mississippi: An Overview" , Mississippi History Now,Mississippi Historical Society. Retrieved August 16, 2010.
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. In the fiscal year 1905, Parchman's first year of operations, the State of Mississippi earned $185,000 (more than $4.6 million in 2009 dollars) from Parchman's operations.Buntin, John. "Mississippi's Corrections Reform" , Governing Magazine, August 2010. Retrieved August 13, 2010.
Originally, Parchman was one of two prisons designated for black men, with the other prisons housing other racial and gender groups.Taylor, William B. and Tyler H. Fletcher. "Profits from convict labor: Reality or myth observations in Mississippi: 1907–1934", Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology, Volume 5, No. 1. Page 30 (1/9). Retrieved October 31, 2010.
In 1909, the State of Mississippi acquired adjacent to the MSP territory, resulting in MDOC having in the Mississippi Delta. As time passed, the state began to consolidate most penal operations in Parchman, making other camps hold minor support roles.Taylor and Fletcher, "Reality or myth", p. 31 In 1916, MDOC bought the O'Keefe Plantation in Quitman County, near Lambert. Originally this plantation was a separate institution, the Lambert Farm. The facility later became Camp B.
By 1917, the Parchman property had been fully cleared. The administration divided the facility into a series of camps, housing black and white prisoners of both genders. By 1917 12 male camps and one female camp were established, with racial segregation maintained throughout. The institution became the main hub of activity for Mississippi's prison system. In 1937, during the Great Depression, the prison had 1,989 inmates.Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration, Mississippi: A Guide to the Magnolia State. The Viking Press, New York, May 1938. 408. Retrieved from Google Books on July 20, 2010. .
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. During that year, the prison installed a gas chamber for on-site executions. It replaced a mobile electric chair, which, between 1940 and February 5, 1952, had been transported to various counties for executions at prisoner's native grounds. In 1942, the prison saw the end of convict leasing. The first person to be executed in the gas chamber was Gerald Albert Gallego, father of American serial killer Gerald Gallego, on March 3, 1955."The Death Penalty In Mississippi, Executions" Mississippi Department of Corrections. Retrieved April 9, 2022.
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. On June 15, 1961, the state government sent the first set of Freedom Riders from Hinds County Prison to Parchman; to make the protesters as uncomfortable as possible, they were put to work on chain gangs. The first group sent to the farm were 45 male Freedom Riders, 29 blacks and 16 whites.Arsenault, Raymond (2006). Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 225. 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.Farmer, James (1998). Lay Bare the Heart: An Autobiography of the Civil Rights Movement. Texas Christian University Press. p. 22. 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.Farmer (1998). Lay Bare the Heart. p. 23. "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."Fankhauser, David. Biology.clc.uc.edu "Freedom Rides" 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.
Fankhauser described the meals:Breakfast every morning was black coffee strongly flavored with chicory, grits, biscuits and blackstrap molasses. Lunch was generally some form of beans or black-eyed peas boiled with pork gristle, served with cornbread. In the evening, it was the same as lunch except it was cold.
The Governor of Mississippi, Ross Barnett, visited the farm a few times to check on the activists. He reportedly told the guards to "break their spirit, not their bones".Oshinsky, David M. (1997). Worse Than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice. The Free Press. p. 235. 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.Biology.clc.uc.edu
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.
1970s–1990s In 1970, civil rights lawyer Roy Haber began taking statements from inmates, which eventually ran to 50 pages detailing murders, rapes, beatings and other abuses they had suffered 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. 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 those who were imprisoned for life 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.