Worse Than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice

by David M. Oshinsky

Prisons in the deep South, with chain gangs, shotguns, and bloodhounds, have been immortalized in movies, blues music, and fiction. Mississippi's Parchman State Penitentiary was the grandfather of them all, a hellhole where conditions were brutal. This epic history fills the gap between slavery and the civil rights era, showing how Parchman and Jim Crow justice proved that there could be something worse than slavery.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Race, African American, American History, Politics, Sociology

320 pages, Paperback

First published April 4, 1996

About the author

David M. Oshinsky is the director of the Division of Medical Humanities at NYU School of Medicine and a professor in the Department of History at New York University.

Reviews

[William2 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Began this on 4th night of rioting in Minneapolis Minnesota. George Floyd’s murder is just the latest crime in more than four centuries of racial injustice. This book outlines the murderous genocide of convict leasing that developed in Mississippi after the Civil War and led to the Konzentrationslager known as Parchman Farm, and the era of state segregation known as Jim Crow.

Oh, listen you men 🎵
I don't mean no harm
If you wanna do good
You better stay off old Parchman farm

...I'm down on Parchman farm
But I sho' wanna go back home
But I hope some day
I will overcome
—Booker T. Washington “Bukka” White

Blacks Americans would be convicted often for trifling or imaginary offenses so a sufficient work force existed for the states’ purposes. Convict leasing grew into a cash cow for many states. This book is about that vile practice, which perpetuated the plantation culture for decades after the Civil War; implicit in it is also a tale of the origins of today’s policy of disproportionate incarceration of black and brown people. A few salient quotes:

“On Christmas Day, 1912, Governor George Donaghey of Arkansas pardoned 360 state prisoners in one fell swoop. His gesture made headlines across the nation, while surprising almost nobody at home. Donaghey have been trying to abolish the [convict] lease since his election in 1908, but a combination of forces— from cotton planters to coal mine operators to corrupt judges and worried taxpayers [convict leasing kept taxes low]— had kept the system alive. Donaghey viewed leasing as a form of legalized murder that sentenced thousands of faceless victims to a “death by oppression” for trivial acts. Under no other system, he believed, did the punishment so poorly fit the crime.” (p. 67)

“The Negro laid every mile of track, a planter observed. ‘These forest lands have been cultivated by him into fertile fields. . . . The levees upon which the Delta depends for protection from floods have been erected mainly by the Negro, and the daily labor in field and town, in planting and building, in operating gins and compresses and oil mills, in moving trains, in handling the great staple of the country—all, in fact, that makes the life behind these earthen ramparts— is but the Negro’s daily toil’“ (p. 112)

The book is succinct and nimble in pursuit of its theme. Please read it.

[M. Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yes, it's about the Jim Crow south. Yes, it's about Parchman Prison Farm in Mississippi. But it is also about systemized human depravity and what happens when a group of people has no power while a different group has absolute power. Before the Civil War, slaves were valuable property. After the War, the freed slaves were a means for the state to make money while working them like slaves while they were prisoners. Blacks were arrested for the smallest of reasons and sometimes for no reason, depending on who was willing to pay the state for workers--and how many workers were needed. Prisoners were often worked to death.

It's our history.

Today the prison still exists, and Oshinsky points out that after a 1972 court case, things have changed at Parchman, but even though the state is making effort to improve conditions and keep them improved, there are still problems. Indicative of the problems in all prisons, a guard describes the situation in Parchman today: These are not submissive inmates. Those days are long gone. A lot of the people we get have no roots. They have no discipline. They are very angry. They resent us more than they fear us, and they need more help than a prison can provide.

We now have more prisoners per capita than any other nation. This is one book that is a must read in order to understand how prisons can cause more problems than they solve.

The only element missing from the book is a thorough description of women prisoners in Parchman. There are a few pages and a few photographs concerning women prisoners, but surely the history of the treatment of women in Parchman is important enough to have more than a few pages. If the men in prisoner were treated as powerless, imagine how awful it must have been for women prisoners throughout Parchman's history.

[Teri · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a well researched, detailed expose on the Parchman State Penitentiary in Mississippi. The facility started out as a penal farm for black men struggling after the end of the Civil War. Most were arrested for some small or made up offense and sent to Parchman which was, at the time, a working cotton plantation. The imprisoned were worked until they died with many more coming in behind them. Over time, the facility changed to a full-on penitentiary. The cotton went away and so did the work, but not the abuse, never the abuse. Today Parchman is known as the Mississippi State Penitentiary, the only maximum security facility in the state. Many early men who were confined to the prison felt that their treatment at Parchman was worse than slavery. This book will clearly give you that feeling as well.

This was a very interesting read, albeit very sad to know the situations that put men and women there and the abuse they endured. Those who were imprisoned early on probably should have never been there. The prison was used as another way to enslave black men during the reconstruction years after the Civil War. I'm very surprised that Parchman existed and survived all those years, especially after the cotton fields were destroyed. Some men felt that the conditions were worse after the fields were gone because the cotton work at least gave them something to do to keep their mind off of prison life and kept them out of trouble with each other.

[Wilhelmina · Rating 5 out of 5]

You will think this book is fiction.
IT IS NOT.

[Sean Sullivan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a must read on the Jim Crow era. When I was reading it, there were times I felt sick to my stomach. Oshinky lays out the horror and despicable racism of the Jim Crow South better than any other author I have read. Worse Than Slavery focuses on the infamous Parchman Farm, a prison farm in Mississippi. Parchman was work camp you were lucky to survive and the stories of how people got there, why the farm was useful for the Mississippi government and what the experience of life on the farm was like for those unlucky enough to end up there gives you a real sense of both the physical and emotional assault on people of color that was present and the economic impact of the Jim Crow era on the deep south.

This book isn’t only about Parchman. It is more generally about the total failure of reconstruction, the abandonment of the idea of equality by America, and the very real price too many African Americans had to pay for the nation’s lack of guts in the face of Southern White Racism.

[Eldon · Rating 4 out of 5]

The title of the book does not do it justice. While the historical operation of Parchman Farm is covered extensively, more than half the book is about post slavery conditions and the origins of convict leasing including the astronomical number of lynchings that occured during the same time period. For a white boy born in the middle of the 20th century, I continue to be amazed by what we did not learn in school or understand as a nation about how this historical brutal and systemic mistreatment shaped the culture and personality for both blacks and whites.

But the book does cover Parchman. In 1971 a Federal Judge inspected the facility. From the book:

"Walking through the cages, talking privately to the inmates, he discovered an institution in shambles, marked by violence and neglect. The camps were laced with open ditches, holding raw sewage and medical waste. Rats scurried along the floors. Electrical wiring was frayed and exposed; broken windowpanes were stuffed with rags to keep out the cold. At one camp the (judge) found, "3 wash basins for 80 men..." At all camps, he saw filthy bathrooms, rotting mattresses, polluted water supplies and kitchens overrun with insects, rodents and the stench of decay."

Nearly 50 years later, I inspected Parchman in February of this year for the plaintiffs in the Amos v. Taylor case. The above quote could be taken and put in my report for the court with little amendment. The main difference is that we were not allowed to speak with the prisoners, nor were they allowed to speak to us. Instead they mimed or whispered, "please help us". The place is still an abomination.

[Andrew Cowart · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really well put together account of how Jim Crow laws and organizations like the Parchman Farm are “worse than slavery”. The topic also remains relevant to today’s issues of institutionalization.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

The key link in arguments to make to people who think that slavery and its caste system ever really ended in America. The use of racialized stereotypes in law enforcement as way to prevent blacks Americans from being fully employed or self-employed has a history that starts right after the civil war and continues until today. The creation of segregated impoverished communities and the indifference white culture has to black on black crime inside these communities is also the same.
The ending seems abrupt here, and I think that may result from some lack of clarity around the book's focus. If the story is supposed to be about Parchman up until the present, it lacks the contextual background to describe the forces that lead men into the the prison today. There's plenty of concise and devastating detail about parchman up through the late seventies, but there needs to be a new chapter about the 80's through today rather than the awkward coda that leaves with the anecdote about the older inmates preferring to work on the farm rather than be housed in the prison.

[Venessia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Being from Mississippi and being raised in the Delta, I knew a lot of this History but a lot of it I did not know. Parchman is like the elephant in the room in the South. We know it's there and we've all heard about it but not very of us know the History of it in depth. The author did an excellent job of compiling the information for this book. He not only gave the history of Parchman, but the history of slavery in MS and the aftereffects....the treatment of POC and how in Mississippi they were actually worse off after slavery, and so so much more. I think this book is a MUST READ for all people of color, but especially those of us in the South. Sadly, tho some things have changed here some of this is still the same. Powerful read....sad mostly but so very necessary.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book about the evolution of the Mississippi penal system post Civil War. Though the book does discuss Parchman Farm quite a bit, it more or less covers the general state of Mississippi race relations and the so called "justice" system in the late 1800's to mid 1900's. You'll learn quite a few unpleasant things. A good book but not a pretty subject. It will teach those that don't already know how difficult the road from slavery to society was for many African Americans. A lesson I think a lot of people should learn.

[George Crowder · Rating 5 out of 5]

In truth, the topic of this outstanding book is considerably broader than the infamous Parchman Farm penitentiary. While readers get an excellent look at how this penal institution functioned and the egregious abuses of the prison, Mr. Oshinsky also supplies excellent context for the institution within Mississippi's historical mistreatment of African Americans. Many horrific details and events are related, but I found the book extremely readable and much less grueling than Slavery By Another Name, Douglas Blackmon's work which deals specifically with the convict lease system.

[Abby Howell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well researched, very readable vivid history of post Civil War incarceration, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, in Mississippi that culminated with the establishment of the state prison/work farm of Parchman. So, so many of the issues that arose post-slavery in terms of incarceration and justice are unfortunately still relevant today. Very frustrating.

[Kathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well researched.

[Brad McKenna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like most books on racial relations in America, this book was a tough read. It dove a little deeper into the economic ramifications of the system of slavery than I’m used to. But it’s one of those secrets that are hiding behind frost glass; while you can’t see it clearly, the shadows make it clear that there’s something there.

“By 1840, Mississippi had become the nation’s leading cotton producer, with black slaves comprising more than half its 375,000 people.” (3)

A state supported like that was doomed by The Emancipation, ostensibly. It took out the free work force part of the supports. Of course they quickly got around that with Sharecropping, which swapped slavery with indebitedness. And when the Reconstruction Acts actually succeeded for a while, a time that was so short I had forgotten it existed, white people answered with laws and violence. The Black Codes essentially made the living situation of the newly freed black illegal. Once arrested, they were loaned out to plantation owners to work off their sentence. If they survived. This lead to a second instance of whites helping but this time it was a bit of class warfare. Poor white farmers couldn’t compete with rich white farmers who could hire the black convicts to make them a profit. And that’s were we get Parchman Farm.

Now, instead of private citizens reaping the rewards, The State did. The same horrible conditions prevailed and decades of systematic racism ensued. Until the middle of last century in fact. This is exhibit P in the case against black being free in only name until...well...with redlining and ignoring the fact the Black Lives Matter, are they truly free?

This is a great book if you’re looking to learn a little bit more about how The Jim Crow South ensured Blacks “knew their place”.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

at times i wonder why i am reading books such as this... i know America was built on racism (and sexism) but will never EVER own up to the devastation it caused and to the reverberations racism has into the present and future of the US... but then i remember hoe good my life has been and how unbelievably lucky i am to have been born white (and male) in America... and i see how America can't treat black people like human being because that means they have to admit slavery, Jim Crow, Black Codes, felony work camps - all legally created, supported, and expanded by the US government and accepted by its white population - was the absolute most awful social system ever... it is nearly impossible to understand how immeasurably racist the US government has always been and likely will always be until white Americans admit to being racist... this book is just another in a long line of powerful written collections of white brutality backed by white government... it is a wonder America has not had a race war, black people have been treated like less than animals for their entire history in the US... sadly, Parchman seems like nothing special, since it just dovetails into the systematic crippling of black America by violently overt racists... the descriptions and stories and songs are hardly noteworthy or exceptional, which is a crushing indictment of white America 'post-slavery'... racists claim blacks are inferior in every way, subhuman even... well, i would wonder if white people would have survived the terrorization of every aspect of their lives as well as black people have, and still do... i hold no hope white America ever corrects the evils of its past and present institutions, and that makes me sad... horribly so...

[Algernon · Rating 4 out of 5]

This little book took me by surprise. It addresses not only the Mississippi's infamous penal farm, which essentially modified and extended slavery into the twentieth century, but also examines the evolution of justice and penology in Mississippi from the Civil War to the present.

Oshinsky conveys this using the kind of anecdotal detail that makes for a gripping historical novel. Very good indeed.

I always find it odd when a book like this as a section of photos in the middle of the book, but the text does not refer to them. Let them be exhibits as in a slide show, not an afterthought.

[Eric · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book reminded me of "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee." It wasn't quite as good or as moving, but it was equally dumbfounding. Nothing but example after example of how cruel and unforgiving our supposedly free and equal society can be to a group of people for a completely arbitrary reason. The descriptions of the lynchings and prison conditions and ordeals were all disturbing, but what was most disturbing was that so many individual people had the exact same experience. Another book that sort of makes you hate yourself for what your ancestors did.

[Jami Powell · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was compelled to read this book after I met a Freedom Rider who was held at Parchman during the early 60s. I didn't know much at all about the infamous prison farm other than its connection with some famous Blues musicians. This book was a page-turner for me. It's fascinating (and horrifying) as you study the history of the penal system in the South (and Mississippi in particular) and discover how this history still affects and shapes our present-day criminal justice system. I'm adding this book to my "Get Yourself Re-Educated" shelf.

[W · Rating 5 out of 5]

A simply told and simply devastating account of life for African Americans in Reconstruction and Jim Crow-era Mississippi, and of the state's penal labor practices in particular. The depth of hatred and violence of Southern racism never ceases to stun me. When it comes to things like black people being rounded up as vagrants to be sent off to malarial swamps to labor and die in their hundreds, you have to accept that in some ways the racial oppression in the South, even after slavery was abolished(!), approached the Holocaust for horror.

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Horrifying, frustrating, rage-inducing and important.

All the debates we are having now in the United States about reforming the prison system are all very old. This is a quote from 1905, that I found in the book Newjack:

"Prisoners are treated now like wild animals and are kept in cages. The system brutalizes the men and the keepers. [The inmates] are forced to work, and this is not reformatory."

As much as we've improved material conditions in the US, the underlying attitude towards societies most vulnerable has changed little for a substantial portion of the population.

[Karen Koppy · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent history of a terrible time in history and a terrible place. Mississippi is notorious for some of the worst racial prejudice and cruelty and this book is graphic in its examples of suffering. It's just unbelievable how cruel some people can be. It also covers the complexity of the economics and contributions to our nation that African Americans provided by back-breaking, life threatening physical work. This prison life was equal to or worse than the life many slaves endured. And it was within my lifetime that things started to change. We still have a long way to go.

[Jennifer Elaine Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mississippi's Parchman State Penitentary is the stuff of legend for criminal justice majors. This book clearly illustrates the brutality of this prison as merely a symptom of larger issues of race and punishment in the American South. I read this for a graduate class several years, and it has become one of those books that I turn to again and again.

[Dan Sharber · Rating 4 out of 5]

worse than slavery is a really hard claim to make. however convict leasing appears to actually have been worse than slavery in some ways. very good book on a hellish place in a hellish state that fought tooth and nail to preserve its racial privilegies. mississippi godamn, indeed.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book. Oshinsky is able to put Parchman Farm into the context of the Jim Crow era: the persistent violence among all groups, the extreme racism, attitudes about crime and slavery. It definitely changed my perspective and was well worth the read.

[Micebyliz]

you can't snack while you read this. you can't help but be nauseous. the farm was about 46 square acres. It occurred to me that Auschwitz is about 40. So similar in cruelty and horror, except Parchman went on and on and on.

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating book about the history of Parchman prison and a history of how prisoners were and are treated in Mississippi

[Thomas Ardrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book gives not only a history of Parchman prison/farm but also a survey of penal history (and thereby racial history) of Mississippi. Highly recommended for all!

[John Valett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Crazy just how rooted slavery is in institutions across the country. This book is not just centered around the Parchman Farm, but also around the pervasive (and often proud) racism of Mississippi past. The book does an excellent job at setting the scene of life after slavery and how the penal system of Convict leasing could be even worse than actual slavery. Shit’s all fucked up man.

[Bryce · Rating 4 out of 5]

An carefully researched history on Parchman Prison in Mississippi, but also an analysis of a society built on racial violence and systemic oppression. And to top it off, a fierce indictment of the Southern penal system.

This was not an easy book to read; the descriptions of death, violence, and torture will sicken any normal person. But it's a necessary read, especially now when so many people are marching for the causes of BLM and prison reform. It answers the often-asked question "How did we get like this??" with "We have always been like this."

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oshinsky wrote this book to show readers the intense horror of prisons and convict life in the Jim Crow era, especially at Parchman Farm. The book is like a one of those fun textbooks (if you believe they exist). Its tone and writing style is scholarly, but nevertheless relaxed and readable. Some people complain that Oshinsky is annoying because he's so snarky, but I didn't have a problem with it, considering the infuriating subject topic. It’s chock full of facts and reliable sources—you don’t have to worry about this author to making up facts…. Though you almost wish he was, because it’s so incredibly sickening.

What I remember most about this book is how angry I got. It’s extremely terrifying to read about how prisons were run, how the freed slaves were treated, and how crazy the white supremacists were. But all of this is what makes it so interesting.

One specific aspect of this book that is really intriguing/horrible is exemplified by the quote the author puts in the front of the book: “The convict’s condition [following the Civil War] was much worse than slavery. The life of the slave was valuable to his master, but there was no financial loss… if a convict died” (L.G. Shivers, “A History of the Mississippi Penitentiary,” 1930). The first reason this is important is because it outlines a basic idea of the book: convicts of that time had it worse than slaves. And who were the convicts? Oh, you know, all the former slaves. White people were scared silly to see "inferior" blacks wandering around free. So they locked them up. And thus, life went from bad to worse for those poor blacks put in the penal system (hence the title). Oshinsky adds this quote to prove another disturbing point. Many people like to disregard our horrible history with slavery because it all happened in the past. They believe that now we’re so much more advanced and aware as a society, we’d recognize and stop slavery immediately. But this quote—as well as other quotes in the front of the book from as early as 1904 – disprove that rationalization. Parchman Farm in all its horror lasted well into the 20th century. We’re not that far away from it… and that is very scary.