So imagine a system of imprisonment that is so
calculating and, well, so brutal that historians
are still fiercely debating whether it was actually
worse than chattel slavery. Yeah, it's an incredibly
heavy premise. It really is. Welcome to another
deep dive, everyone. Today we are unpacking a
really fascinating piece of source material.
It's a summary detailing the critical reception,
the rigorous sourcing, and this highly unusual
structure of a 1996 book. Right. The book is
called Worst in Slavery, Parchment Farm and the
Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice. Exactly. written
by David Emashinsky and published by the Free
Press. And our mission for this deep dive is
to explore how this specific text documents the
transition from slavery to Jim Crow at the Mississippi
State Penitentiary. Which is, of course, famously
known as Parchment Farm down in Sunflower County.
Right. And if you're listening to this and you've
ever wondered how scholars actually build a historical
narrative out of something so traumatic, how
they debate these horror stories, this is going
to show you exactly how the sausage is made.
Oh, absolutely. I mean, building that narrative
really starts with the raw materials, right?
Yeah. The sources. Yeah, let's let's start there,
because Oshinsky's sourcing is wild. It is. He
didn't just look at official state decrees. The
source material notes he used, primary documents
from the prison, but also, crucially, from plantations.
Oh, and interviews, right? Yes, firsthand interviews.
And there's this great quote from reviewer James
Goodman, the new leader, where he points out
that Oshinsky relied on works that were, quote,
long forgotten. Long forgotten. I mean, Goodman
calls them invaluable, but that phrase long forgotten
just, it carries so much weight. It really does.
It forces you to ask, well, who forgot them and
why? Right. Like if you have to dig up forgotten
documents to tell the story of a major state
penitentiary, the official narrative is clearly
hiding something. Exactly. By pairing those plantation
documents with the prison records, he's methodically
proving that you cannot understand the prison
without understanding the plantation system first.
Which actually brings us to the structure of
the book itself. Because honestly, the structure
completely baffled me at first glance. Oh, you
mean the slow burn aspect of it? Yes. I mean,
the subtitle is literally, Parchman Farm and
the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice. So if I pick
that up, I assume chapter one is going to be
about Parchman Farm. That would be the traditional
way to do it, yeah. But the introduction starts
way back before the US Civil War. It moves through
the end of slavery into Jim Crow. And the prison
itself doesn't even show up until the halfway
point. It takes a long time to get there, yeah.
So I've got to push back on this. If I buy a
book about a specific prison, I want to step
inside those walls early on. Why dedicate 50
% of the text to pre -Civil War Mississippi?
Isn't that just alienating the reader? Well,
it's definitely a risk. But Oshinsky is prioritizing
historical logic over a quick hook. What do you
mean by that? So if he starts on page one with
the grand opening of Parchment Farm, the reader
might think, oh, this was just a new flawed criminal
justice experiment. Ah, like it just popped out
of nowhere. Right. He's withholding the prison
to make a point about its origins. By making
you wade through the antebellum south and the
plantation economy first, you feel the momentum.
The momentum of like the state trying to replace
its labor force. Exactly. The structure is the
argument. When Parchman finally appears halfway
through, it doesn't feel like a new building.
It feels like... An inevitable mutation of the
plantation. Yes. It's the old foundation beneath
the new building. It's the logical continuation
of systemic control. Okay, wow. That totally
reframes it. And that leads us right into this
massive debate from our notes regarding the book's
title, because he calls it worse than slavery.
which is incredibly provocative. It really grabs
you by the collar, but not every critic bought
into the literal premise of that title, right?
No, they didn't. The main pushback came from
James McPherson in the New York Times. And McPherson
really praises the book, generally speaking.
Oh, he loved it. He called the writing vigorous
and heart -hitting. He even said the absolute
best chapter. It's the one describing the prisoners'
lives between 1904 and 1930. Which, just for
context, that window is the absolute peak of
Jim Crow enforcement and the convict lease system.
Right. But then McPherson throws in this crucial
caveat. He says that while Oshinsky proves prisoner
life was very much like slavery, it's not clear
if he proves it was actually harsher. Yeah, that's
a huge distinction to make. So let me ask you,
the title is worse than slavery, but the NYT
reviewer says it's not clearly worse, just similar.
Is Olshinsky just using a clickbait title to
sell books, or is there a deeper point here?
I think it's McPherson highlighting a much deeper
problem. I mean, how exactly does a historian
quantify human suffering? It feels like an impossible
metric. Totally impossible. What makes one horror
worse? Is it mortality rates? the psychological
terror. Under chattel slavery, enslaved people
were legally considered valuable property. Right.
So there was a perverse financial incentive to
keep them alive. Exactly. Their bodies were investments
to the slaveholders, but under the convict lease
system at places like Parchman. The state just
had an endless supply of replaceable people.
Yes. If a prisoner was worked to death, there
was no financial loss. The state just enforced
a vagrancy law and arrested someone else. So
the disposability of human life was absolute.
That terrifying disposability is probably what
Oshinsky means by worse. But McPherson's point
is that empirically proving one era of abuse
is harsher than another is an academic trap.
Because they're both just distinct, devastating
horror stories. Exactly. Which, actually, horror
story is the exact phrase used by another reviewer
we have here, Brad Hooper in Booklist. Yeah,
Hooper was very explicit about that. He called
it a horror story, said the work was rigorous
and belongs on the US history shelf. But that
makes me wonder, how do human beings survive
that kind of psychological crushing? Well, that's
where the music comes in. Yes, the music analogy.
This quote from James Goodman completely caught
me off guard. He said the book reads like a,
quote, quietly powerful piece of music, less
blues than jazz. It's such an evocative way to
describe a rigorous history book. It really is.
And our notes point out that Oshinsky surprisingly
includes the actual lyrics of prison -related
songs right in the text. Which is brilliant.
But I want to dig into that less blues than jazz
thing, because blues is usually this direct emotional
lament, right? One person singing about their
individual pain. It's very linear. But jazz is
complex, it's unpredictable, but it's bound by
this systemic, mechanical rhythm. Does Goodman
mean the book focuses more on the mechanics of
Jim Crow justice than just individual sorrow?
I think that's arguably the most insightful piece
of criticism in our sources today. If this were
a blues narrative, it would be a straightforward
tragedy. Start with the arrest, detail the suffering,
and end in sorrow. Exactly. Devastating, but
structurally simple. But jazz is polyphonic.
It has overlapping timelines, disness, multiple
voices. Oh, like the structure we were talking
about earlier. Yes, wading through the antebellum
south, the plantation economy, waiting to introduce
the prison that is a jazz composition. He's layering
the instruments, the state legislature, the wardens.
All playing this heavy, oppressive rhythm of
the state's justice system. And then slicing
right through that heavy rhythm, you have the
actual prison song lyrics. Which act as the human
solo. You're reading this dense academic history,
and suddenly you're confronted with the actual
words sung by inmates sweating in the fields.
Wow. It just completely grounds all that abstract
history into immediate human reality. It elevates
the whole text. The inmates aren't just passive
statistics in a horror story on a shelf. By printing
their lyrics, Oshinsky treats a song, sung in
a field with the same weight as a state decree.
They become active voices documenting their own
history. I love that. It's a really powerful
choice. But speaking of Oshinsky's choices, there
is one more structural thing he does that really
stirs up a debate about the role of a historian.
Ah, the 1996 tangents. Yes. The book was published
in 1996. And according to our summary, Oshinsky
doesn't just stay in the past. At times, he describes
events so good in 1996 and goes on tangents about
completely different subjects. He essentially
breaks the fourth wall of history. And the reviewers
definitely noticed this. Adolf Reed Jr. in The
Nation called the book an especially welcome
reminder of past race relations that society
would find undesirable to return to. And Goobin
called it timely, right? Exactly. And we even
know the topic stayed relevant because another
book down on Parchman Farm, was published just
a few years later in 1999. It definitely struck
a nerve. But let me play devil's advocate here.
If I pick up a book to learn about 1904 to 1930,
and the author keeps talking about 1996 current
events, is he abandoning his post as an objective
historian? That's a fair question. I mean, is
he crossing a line and acting more like a social
critic? Well, this touches on a massive debate.
What is the purpose of history? Is a historian
just a custodian of old facts, dusting them off
and locking them in a glass case? A strict traditionalist
would say yes, they want the glass case. Sure.
But look at Adolf Reed Jr.'s quote. He calls
it a reminder of conditions we'd find undesirable
to return to. You only need a warning if the
threat is still palpable. Oh, so by jumping forward
to 1996, he's removing the comfort of distance.
Precisely. He won't let you close the book and
say, well, thank goodness that's over. By detailing
1996 criminal justice alongside the 1904 convict
lease system, he's showing that the jazz rhythm
never stopped playing. It just changed its tempo
and its legal terminology. Right. And the fact
that Goodman found it timely and that Down on
Parchment Farm came out in 1999 proves that readers
were seeing reflections of Parchment in their
own news cycles. So he's making the argument
that the wall between the past and present is
basically an illusion. Exactly. It's not a lack
of objectivity. It's a structural argument about
enduring systems. Man, that is fascinating. So,
bringing all these threads together, what does
this deep dive mean for us as readers? We've
unpacked a text that critics universally praise
as rigorous, but also profoundly unconventional.
Very unconventional. We started with an author
digging up long -forgotten plantation records.
We explored how he built a cinematic, slow -burn
narrative that forces you to sit with the antebellum
south before you ever see the Jim Crow penitentiary.
We looked at the grim mathematics of measuring
trauma, debating with the New York Times whether
it was like slavery or worse. Right. And we saw
how he wove the breathing lyrics of prison songs
into this complex jazz like history that refuses
to stay safely quarantined in the past. It's
really a master class in how history is felt,
not just recorded. It truly is. But as we wrap
up today, I want to leave you with a final thought
spinning off that beautiful detail about the
music. The book preserves the lyrics of those
prison songs, right? The art created by the inmates
themselves while navigating this horrific system.
Yeah, their own words. It makes you wonder. What
happens to the history of a place like Parchman
Farm if those songs were never recorded or written
down in books like this? That's a haunting thought.
Does the horror story just disappear silently
into the Mississippi soil? Or does human suffering
always find another way to echo forward and be
heard? The permanence of history really relies
on our willingness to keep unearthing it. Keep
asking questions, keep looking beneath the floorboards.
Thanks for joining us everyone and we will catch
you on the next Deep Dive.