History
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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
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“The thing that struck me forcefully was the feeling of great age about the place. Standing on that old parade ground, which is now a cricket field, I could feel the dead generations crowding me. Here was the oldest settlement of freedmen in the Western world, no doubt. Men who had thrown off the bands of slavery by their own courage and ingenuity. The courage and daring of the Maroons strike like a purple beam across the history of Jamaica.”
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