reviews
Aug 25, 2008
M.
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Yes, it's about the Jim Crow south. Yes, it's about Parchman Prison Farm in Mississippi. But it is also about systemized human depravity and what happens when a group of people has no power while a different group has absolute power. Before the Civil War, slaves were valuable property. After the War, the freed slaves were a means for the state to make money while working them like slaves while they were prisoners. Blacks were arrested for the smallest of reasons and sometimes for no reason, depe
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Sep 17, 2007
Sean
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This book is a must read on the Jim Crow era. When I was reading it, there were times I felt sick to my stomach. Oshinky lays out the horror and despicable racism of the Jim Crow South better than any other author I have read. Worse Than Slavery focuses on the infamous Parchman Farm, a prison farm in Mississippi. Parchman was work camp you were lucky to survive and the stories of how people got there, why the farm was useful for the Mississippi government and what the experience of life on the f
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Aug 06, 2011
While others have written excellent reviews on the impact that this compelling book has made on them, I'd like to contribute from a slightly different angle. Just prior to this book I had been reading _The Lives They Left Behind: Suitcases from a State Hospital Attic_. The similarity between the two struck me, as the one uses Parchman Farm in MS to illustrate the horrors of a penal system gone wild and the other uses Willard Psychiatric Center in upstate NY in a like manner to describe the flaws
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Nov 23, 2011
Lauren
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Oshinsky wrote this book to show readers the intense horror of prisons and convict life in the Jim Crow era, especially at Parchman Farm. The book is like a one of those fun textbooks (if you believe they exist). Its tone and writing style is scholarly, but nevertheless relaxed and readable. Some people complain that Oshinsky is annoying because he's so snarky, but I didn't have a problem with it, considering the infuriating subject topic. It’s chock full of facts and reliable sources—you don’t
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Dec 16, 2009
Jennifer Elaine
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Mississippi's Parchman State Penitentary is the stuff of legend for criminal justice majors. This book clearly illustrates the brutality of this prison as merely a symptom of larger issues of race and punishment in the American South. I read this for a graduate class several years, and it has become one of those books that I turn to again and again.
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Feb 03, 2012
Andy
rated it:
Parchman Farms. A dark history of Mississippi. The brutality and sadness is very moving and hard to believe this was only starting to change in the early 70's. A great book on the old South "caste" system.
Oct 12, 2008
Algernon
rated it:
This little book took me by surprise. It addresses not only the Mississippi's infamous penal farm, which essentially modified and extended slavery into the twentieth century, but also examines the evolution of justice and penology in Mississippi from the Civil War to the present.
Oshinsky conveys this using the kind of anecdotal detail that makes for a gripping historical novel. Very good indeed.
I always find it odd when a book like this as a section of photos in the mid More...
Oshinsky conveys this using the kind of anecdotal detail that makes for a gripping historical novel. Very good indeed.
I always find it odd when a book like this as a section of photos in the mid More...
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Jun 19, 2009
Wilhelmina
rated it:
You will think this book is fiction.
IT IS NOT.
IT IS NOT.
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Jan 28, 2009
Eric
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This book reminded me of "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee." It wasn't quite as good or as moving, but it was equally dumbfounding. Nothing but example after example of how cruel and unforgiving our supposedly free and equal society can be to a group of people for a completely arbitrary reason. The descriptions of the lynchings and prison conditions and ordeals were all disturbing, but what was most disturbing was that so many individual people had the exact same experience. Another book
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Jan 24, 2012
Dan
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worse than slavery is a really hard claim to make. however convict leasing appears to actually have been worse than slavery in some ways. very good book on a hellish place in a hellish state that fought tooth and nail to preserve its racial privilegies. mississippi godamn, indeed.
Jan 10, 2008
Melody
rated it:
I just started to read this book and it gives you a look into times of slavery, and how people were truly treated.
Feb 10, 2012
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