Less than an hour separates Emmett Till's murder scene from Mississippi State Penitentiary. The state's oldest prison is the Mississippi State Penitentiary (MSP).
The prison was once operated by a well-known Sunflower County family whose patriarch, J. M. Parchman, served as the first warden, hence where the prison’s name originates.
As one of three state prisons run by the Mississippi Department of Corrections, it is also known as Parchman Penal Farm.
It has over 18,000 acres and covers an area of 46 square miles.
It was initially divided into three separate farms: a small farm run by white prisoners; a smaller one run by women (mainly Black); and a large, vast plantation for the prison's Black prisoners, who made up the vast majority of the inmates.
Four fences were built at the beginning of 1901, primarily by state criminals. The Parchman prison farm system became operational in 1905.
Some of its most famous prisoners include Elvis Presley’s father, Vernon, who was imprisoned in 1938 for check forgery, and blues singer Bukka White (also known as Booker T. Washington White), who served three years in 1937 for shooting a man in the leg. White composed his famous “Parchman Farm Blues,” which warned young men about the horror of the prison.
“The Justice Department announced Wednesday that a two-year federal investigation into the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman has determined that unconstitutional conditions — including a lack of mental health services and an overreliance on solitary confinement — contributed to a spate of deadly violence among inmates,” wrote David Nakamura in April 2022. In 2020, inmates and some penitentiary personnel reported inhumane living conditions, such as broken toilets, moldy showers, non-functioning water sources, lack of medical services, and very uncomfortable room temperatures.
A two-year federal probe into the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman Farm has found that unsafe state prison conditions — including solitary confinement and a lack of mental health treatment — had violated the U.S. Constitution and contributed to deadly violence among inmates.
Although it was reported that Gov. Tate Reeves issued an order to shut down unit 29 of the prison, has anything else happened?
One day, while researching other things, I came across the prison and some history tied to it.
Being a curious person, it dawned on me what happened after this commotion was streamed on every media and news outlet in the country. I want to know what’s happened since 2020.
Have things improved for those who work and embody the prison environment daily? It’s like everyone forgot about it…We’ll touch back on this matter; stay tuned!
