Parchman Life Unfiltered

Marlaina Leppert-Miller

Unit 29:
Writing from Parchman Prison
Louis Bourgeois (Ed.)
Vox Press, 2024, 219 pages, $19.99 paperback.

UNIT 29: WRITING from Parchman Prison provides a raw look inside the Mississippi State Penitentiary (MSP or Parchman) Unit 29 through the unfiltered writings and artwork of inmates serving long or life sentences.

This compilation of essays, poems, journal entries, and drawings from 2021 to 2024 offers insight into a segment of the criminal justice system that fails to rehabilitate or provide a life of basic dignity to these prisoners, but instead abandons them to suffer through crippling boredom, deprivation, degradation, and inhumanity.

This collection, assembled under the direction of editor Louis Bourgeois, who directs the Prison Writes Initiative, includes writing that uncovers the inner thoughts and often harsh, sometimes harrowing, experiences of these incarcerated men in their own uncensored words.

Parchman’s roots are steeped in the racism, racial control, oppression and forced labor of Mississippi’s slave past. Parchman Prison, once a slave plantation, was bought by the state of Mississippi in 1901 and converted into a penal farm, engendering a system labeled “worse than slavery” by generations of inmates.

Many of the early prisoners were harshly sentenced for breaking Jim Crow laws and other minor offenses. The brutality against and deplorable living conditions imposed on the predominantly Black prison population inside Parchman Prison have been widely documented.

Among Parchman’s inmates were Freedom Riders arrested in 1961 for “breach of the peace” while challenging Mississippi’s illegal policies of segregation in public facilities. Holding Freedom Riders inside MSP was an intentional strategy designed to deter further Civil Rights activism, but it also brought national attention to the prison’s horrid conditions.

Despite orders for reform resulting from multiple lawsuits and investigations over the decades, evidence of gross human rights violations continues to surface.

In 1971, a federal judge deemed Parchman Prison “unfit for human habitation” and an “affront to modern standards of decency.”(1)

And as recently as 2022, a U.S. Department of Justice report found that the conditions and practices at the Mississippi State Penitentiary violate the constitutional rights of persons incarcerated there by subjecting them to violence and risk of serious harm.(2)

Narratives of Incarceration

The personal narratives included in Unit 29: Writing from Parchman Prison provide further evidence of ongoing abuse and neglect.

Rare accounts in the book capture the peace and purpose found by those inmates working in the kitchen and other spaces.

Leon Johnson cleans the Administration Building at Unit 29. In his essay “My Prison Walk” (118-121), Johnson shares a side of prison life that seems unattainable for most inside the walls of MSP. He has kind interactions with the officers and staff. With greater responsibility and freedom of movement, Johnson is able to visit the prison library, hear the prison band play, and “go outside for a little fresh air and sunshine.” (119)

Much of the work in Unit 29 tells a very different story, however. Disturbing themes emerge through these critical accounts, self-reflections, rambles, rants, and desperate pleas for help from inside Unit 29.

The incarcerated writers struggle with constant boredom, loneliness, depression and regret. Many spend years, even a decade or more, on lockdown with three shower breaks and three hours of yard time a week outside their small, filthy cells.

They experience inhumane living conditions, violence and degradation.

Brutal beatings and stabbings are common, while guards look the other way or are complicit. Gangs claim control of areas inside the prison. Drugs are a vile yet irresistible escape and a currency within Unit 29.

Abusive, lewd and degrading behavior is the norm for some of the inmates, and mental health issues are not addressed in any meaningful way. Darosky Ford’s “Feces Throwers of MSP Unit 29 Lockdown” (9-20) deals unabashedly with such perversion:

The WORD/was/there was a convict named Twin
Who was the king of the shit shakes.
He would put it in a VO5 Shampoo bottle and
Squirt it through the cell bars on whoever he argued with.
I happened to see Twin,
He was dark skinned, and more than six feet tall.
I saw him throw a bag of shit bigger than a basketball. (19)

There are some who maintain hope through all this, but hope is often reserved for those looking forward to a release date.

Through his journaling in “Thoughts Every Day” (122-129), Elijah Stamps expresses excitement, “It’s finally a new year. Jan 1, 2023. Man, it feels good to say that. Just another year for me and hopefully I can walk on a new journey into becoming a successful family man.” (126)

Others find ways to cope through phone calls with family, clinging onto religious faith, or penning for a creative writing class. Some inmates work out and lift weights. “It only masks what’s lurking beneath all the muscle. It takes their minds off the problems they wake up to every day: people they miss, opportunities they blew, and the dreams they never got to live out in color” (79), writes Corey Carroll in his reflection “Drugs.” (77-80)

Many give in to despair. There are numerous accounts of suicide and suicidal ideation at Unit 29 and other prisons evoked in this collection.

Death by suicide was the fate of Christopher Smith, whose journal entries give the reader direct access to his downward spiral. Smith’s “Thoughts” (104-113) powerfully conveys his fear that his food is being poisoned by gang members, rage at the guards’ inaction and the deplorable living conditions, and deep anguish over loss of family.

1/8/23
I’m ready to DIE!
The reasons I’m ready:
I’m a FAILURE OF A FATHER
I’m a FAILURE OF A SON
No officers want TO HELP ME BECAUSE I’M WHITE
I’M TIRED OF NOT EATING OR DRINKING
FUCK LIFE
I’M ALWAYS DEPRESSED
I’M TIRED OF GANG MEMBERS NOT BEING DEALT WITH BY
STAFF BECAUSE THEY’RE SCARED
DAY 10 HUNGER STRIKE (113)

His was yet another life made unbearable by the conditions in MSP, and his freedom came by his own hands.

Overall, the collection serves as an indictment of a broken system, represented by Lady Liberty behind bars in Corey Carroll’s drawing Never Free. (49) It exposes egregious shortcomings in our criminal justice system.

If we claim to want rehabilitation for those who serve their sentences and are released, how can this be achieved under such appalling conditions? If we speak of valuing dignity for all human beings, then how can we accept the inhumane treatment of even those serving life sentences?

Unit 29: Writing from Parchman Prison creates an uncomfortable and unwelcome awareness that we tolerate “cruel and unusual punishment” as long as it is hidden away out of sight.

“Our happiness does not matter to…society. Even if a prisoner does get out and try to make a new life for himself, he is viewed as an evil felon and has a hard time getting a decent job, or even respect. It is my dream to show people that we do matter” (209), declares Nathan Sumrall in “My Life in Prison.” (170-192, 194-213)

Later in his essay, Sumrall writes, “Many Parchman inmates have their own unique experiences and their unique outlooks on prison life, and I would love to see the world uncover our rock one day and shine light in, and give us a voice.” (212)

The voices of Parchman are telling a story we must ALL hear.

Notes

1. Innocence Project. The Lasting Legacy of Parchman Farm, the Prison Modeled After a Slave Plantation. May 29, 2020. https://innocenceproject.org/news/the-lasting-legacy-of-parchman-farm-the-prison-modeled-after-a-slave-plantation/
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2. U.S. Department of Justice. “Justice Department Finds Conditions at Mississippi State Penitentiary Violate the Constitution.” [Press release]. April 20, 2022. https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-finds-conditions-mississippi-state-penitentiary-violate-constitution
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January-February 2026, ATC 240