History
| This section needs additional citations for verification. |
For much of the nineteenth century after the American Civil War, the state of Mississippi used a convict lease system for its prisoners; lessees paid fees to the state and were responsible for feeding, clothing and housing prisoners who worked for them as laborers. As it was lucrative for both the state and lessees, as in other states, the system led to entrapment and a high rate of convictions for minor offenses for black males, whose population as prisoners increased in the decades after the war. They often struggled for years to get out of the convict lease system. Due to abuses and corruption, the state ended this program after December 31, 1894, and had to build prisons to accommodate convicted persons. The State of Mississippi began to acquire property to build its first correctional facilities.
In 1900 the Mississippi State Legislature appropriated US$80,000 for the purchase of the Parchman Plantation, a 3789-acre (15.33-Km²) property in Sunflower County. What is now the prison property was located at a railroad spur called "Gordon Station."
Read more about this topic: Mississippi State Penitentiary
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“English history is all about men liking their fathers, and American history is all about men hating their fathers and trying to burn down everything they ever did.”
—Malcolm Bradbury (b. 1932)
“The history of any nation follows an undulatory course. In the trough of the wave we find more or less complete anarchy; but the crest is not more or less complete Utopia, but only, at best, a tolerably humane, partially free and fairly just society that invariably carries within itself the seeds of its own decadence.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“When the coherence of the parts of a stone, or even that composition of parts which renders it extended; when these familiar objects, I say, are so inexplicable, and contain circumstances so repugnant and contradictory; with what assurance can we decide concerning the origin of worlds, or trace their history from eternity to eternity?”
—David Hume (1711–1776)