Worse than slavery : Parchman Farm and the ordeal of Jim Crow justice

Resource Information

The work Worse than slavery : Parchman Farm and the ordeal of Jim Crow justice represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in Waubonsee Community College. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

Worse than slavery : Parchman Farm and the ordeal of Jim Crow justice

Title remainder

Parchman Farm and the ordeal of Jim Crow justice

Statement of responsibility

David M. Oshinsky

Creator

• Oshinsky, David M., 1944-

Subject

• Criminal justice, Administration of -- Mississippi -- History
• Fallstudiensammlung
• Gefängnis
• Geschichte
• History
• Justice pénale -- Administration -- Mississippi -- Histoire
• Mississippi
• Criminal justice, Administration of
• Mississippi State Penitentiary
• Mississippi State Penitentiary -- History
• Prisoners
• Prisoners -- Mississippi -- History
• Prisonniers -- Mississippi -- Histoire
• State Penitentiary, Parchman, Mississippi
• Mississippi

Genre

• History

Language

eng

Summary

• "Worse Than Slavery" is an epic history of race and punishment in the deepest South from emancipation to the civil rights era - and beyond. Southern prisons have been immortalized in convict work songs, in the blues, and in movies such as Cool Hand Luke and The Defiant Ones. Mississippi's Parchman Penitentiary was the grandfather of them all, an immense, isolated plantation with shotguns, whips, and bloodhounds, where inmates worked the cotton fields in striped clothing from dawn to dusk. William Faulkner described Parchman as "destination doom." Its convicts included bluesmen like "Son" House and "Bukka" White, who featured the prison in the legendary "Midnight Special" and "Parchman Farm Blues."
• Noted historian David M. Oshinsky draws on prison records, pardon files, folklore, oral history, and the blues to offer an unforgettable portrait of Parchman and Jim Crow justice - from the horrors of convict leasing in the late nineteenth century to the struggle for black equality in the 1960s, when Parchman was used to break the spirit of civil rights workers who journeyed south on the Freedom Rides. In Mississippi, the criminal justice system often proved that there could be something worse than slavery. The "old" Parchman is gone, a casualty of federal court orders in the 1970s. What it tells us about our past is well worth remembering in a nation deeply divided by race

Cataloging source

DLC

Dewey number

365/.9762

Illustrations

• illustrations
• plates

Index

index present

LC call number

HV9475.M72

LC item number

M576 1996

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

bibliography