Sharecropping vs Parchman

Learning about the conditions and what went on in Parchman Penitentiary in Mississippi during the documentary on Friday was very eye opening to me. I was shocked by how young many offenders who were sent there were, the intense labor they were forced to go through, the various sewage problems and wooden barracks, how long this was allowed to go on for, and how this is went on in our recent history. These horrifying things didn't occur in the 18th or 19th centuries, but well into the mid 1900s. And, if we allow ourselves to take a closer look at Parchman , the parallels to slavery are blatant. Parchman throughout it history was inhabited by a majority of black prisoners, who were forced to work long days in blistering heat as they tended to crops. They were also beaten regularly, their living quarters were overcrowded and unkept, and they were killed on sight if they made a run for it. Parchman was even founded on an old slave plantation. But, sadly, this recurrence of slavery after the civil war was not an isolated event, but occurred throughout the South in a system known as share cropping. Once slaves were freed, most had no where to go, nor the means to travel elsewhere or to even buy a house. As a result, their past owners would "lease" them a portion of their property and in return, they would owe the leaser a large portion of their crops. The land owners would also lease them equipment and housing, again for another fee. All these different fees would add up and the recently freed African Americans would be in crippling debt to the land owners, and be obligated to work the land. It was extremely hard to get out of debt and in the end their lives under sharecropping wasn't so different then their life as a slave. Also similar to Parchman, the slavery-type conditions these African Americans were forced to work under didn't end until the mids 1900s. In Parchman, there were many reforms and as a result the inmates are treated much more humanely, and with sharecropping, various laws were passed that eventually ended the institution.