Parchman Farm: Mississippi's State Penitentiary in the 1930s

In 1900, the Mississippi legislature appropriated funds to purchase approximately 4,000 acres of farmland in Sunflower County, the heart of the Delta. The state's aim was to establish the Mississippi State Penitentiary, commonly known as Parchman because of the hamlet where it is located. From its inception, the prison farm was designed to preserve the vestiges of the antebellum South. Legislators believed they had designed the ideal correctional institution because Parchman would turn a pr...