A Brutal Inheritance
Fred said his mother, Bernice, had been convicted of killing a neighbor and served two years in the infamous Mississippi State Penitentiary, better known as Parchman Farm. In her appeal to the state Supreme Court a few months later, Bernice’s own lawyer called the incident “an ordinary negro woman fight” and said that most of the testimonies should be discounted — except for the sole white man’s — because “a so-called solem oath, has little, if any, restraining influence on this character of witnesses.” Hiram has few records of what happened to Bernice during her time in prison.
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