parchman farm

Down South if you do anything that's wrong,
They'll sure put you down on Parchman Farm.

They'll put you under a man named Captain Jack;
He'll write his name all up and down your back.

--Son House
Parchman Farm Blues

Between 1895 and 1901 the Mississippi state prison at Parchman was re-designed as a plantation, and thereafter functioned as part of the system of forced, mostly black labor that prevailed throughout the south up until World War II, and is documented by Douglas Blackmon in his book "Slavery by Another Name."

The folklorist Alan Lomax recorded work gang songs there and at the infamous Louisiana state prison at Angola in 1947, As you listen to a Parchman field crew singing "Early in the Morning," you may be struck, as I was, by the contrast between the emotionally neutral lyrics and the unmistakable expression of anguish in the tone of the singers.

Lomax wrote in his liner notes for the resulting album, "Prison Songs," that "These songs belong to the musical tradition which Africans brought to the New World, but they are also as American as the Mississippi River. They were born out of the very rock and earth of this country, as black hands broke the soil, moved, reformed it, and rivers of stinging sweat poured upon the land under the blazing heat of Southern skies, and are mounted upon the passion that this struggle with nature brought forth. They tell us the story of the slave gang, the sharecropper system, the lawless work camp, the chain gang, the pen."

Parchman, strange to say, was not all bad. It had one of the most liberal family visitation policies in the country, which included allowing for conjugal visits of up to two hours a couple times a month. Prison officials credited that policy with keeping jailhouse homosexuality at Parchman Farm, and the violence and predatory behavior that arise from it, at low levels.

And while Parchman's inmates were mostly black, it was not strictly speaking a segregated facility. One of Elvis Presley's earliest memories was of the three-year sentence his father served there for forgery, and we can safely assume that Vernon Presley labored alongside the negro inmates "down in a ditch with a great long spade," as Son House, who himself did time in Parchman, describes the experience.

What went on at Parchman, Angola, and elsewhere in the south in the first part of the last century is an important facet of American history, mostly overlooked until Blackmon's book appeared a couple years ago. I wonder if the Texas State Board of Education is planning to include this information in the revised U.S. history texts they are mandating for the state's public schools.