Worse Than Slavery by David M. Oshinsky

Author:David M. Oshinsky
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Free Press
Published: 1996-07-08T16:00:00+00:00

II

Marshall was sent to Oakley Farm, a 2,700-acre tract for white state convicts in Hinds County, south of Jackson. As an educated man, he became the prison’s commissary clerk, a rather easy job. “I have abundant time to read my German books and to study them ad infinitum,” he wrote a friend. Marshall well understood the cultural gulf that separated him from the other convicts. They were “mostly country boys,” he claimed, and “among the vilest of the earth.” Yet his correspondence offered a rare glimpse into a world that few people saw, and fewer still could put clearly into words. “Those on the outside think they know trouble,” he mused, “but they do not even catch a glimpse of the real dark sorrow that life can hold.”6

Oakley was the white forerunner of Parchman Farm. Its population was divided into two classes: trusties and gunmen. “The trusties are men … who have shown themselves willing and obedient,” Marshall explained. Their main job was to watch over the gunmen “day time or night time, waking or sleeping,” to keep them “always within range of a shotgun or rifle.”

Each morning, the white gunmen were marched to the fields, four abreast, with armed trusties on all sides:

Immediately in front of them rides a beefy man, called a foreman or driver, armed with a heavy handled bull whip…. Behind the gunmen comes the “dog sergeant,” that is a semi-trusty leading two leashed blood hounds. Still further behind comes the trusty water boy on a crazy cart containing a whiskey barrel of water.

What most impressed Marshall was the meticulous organization in the fields. The men hoed and plowed in rhythm as the trusties kept close watch. The bloodhounds moved down one line, the water cart up another. The driver seemed to be everywhere, “directing, scolding, encouraging, or whacking across the shoulders with the whip.” Under him were special trusties, known as “strikers,” who forced the “weaklings” and “sicklings” to keep up with the gang. “Does it not make you shudder to read of this?” Marshall wondered. “What must it do then to witness or endure it?”

Yet Marshall knew better than to complain. “I myself am made as comfortable as I can be made in an uncomfortable place,” he said, “and have been fortunate in misfortune.” Others suffered from overwork, from the intense heat, and from the malarial fever that sapped them to the bone. “I truly trust that I will not get sick here,” Marshall wrote, “for the very thought of sickness in a convict camp in the country is appalling. And yet there are men here so inured to suffering of all kinds, that they do not mind so much the pain of the sickness as they fear the loss of time from the crops and the … displeasure of the sergeant.”

The convicts Marshall described were sullen and humiliated, resenting their confinement and their toil. Some men “went crazy” at Oakley, while others “teetered on the very gulf of madness.” Suicide attempts were common though not always successful.

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