Worse Than Slavery

This sensitively told tale of suffering, brutality, and inhumanity explores an epic history of race and punishment in the deepest South from emancipation to the Civil Rights Era-and beyond.

Immortalized in blues songs and movies like Cool Hand Luke and The Defiant Ones, Mississippi's infamous Parchman State Penitentiary was synonymous with cruelty. Now, noted historian David Oshinsky gives us the true story of the notorious prison, drawing on police records, prison documents, folklore, blues...