Worse Than Slavery
By David M. Oshinsky
- Release Date: 1997-04-22
- Genre: Social Science
Description
In this sensitively told tale of suffering, brutality, and inhumanity, Worse Than Slavery is an epic history of race and punishment in the deepest South from emancipation to the Civil Rights Era—and beyond.
Immortalized in blues songs and movies like Cool Hand Luke and The Defiant Ones, Mississippi’s infamous Parchman State Penitentiary was, in the pre-civil rights south, synonymous with cruelty. Now, noted historian David Oshinsky gives us the true story of the notorious prison, drawing on police records, prison documents, folklore, blues songs, and oral history, from the days of cotton-field chain gangs to the 1960s, when Parchman was used to break the wills of civil rights workers who journeyed south on Freedom Rides.
Reviews
An absolute must read!
5By karynqThis book both simultaneously made me shake with rage and tremble with horror at a history that has been purposely been hid from view. I thank the author for writing this. I never knew this part of American history and when you read the atrocities you will see why.Must read
5By Sr. GraysonOshinsky tells how white Southern society adjusted to post Reconstruction labor relations between themselves and Southern Blacks. It's a great resource full evidentiary backed statements and assumptions throughout.
