'Punishment on the plantation was, essentially, physical punishment,' wrote one historian. Yet whipping had strong racial overtones because it had been used so frequently against slaves. It had been legally, often publicly, employed against white criminals for a host of minor crimes, and it had survived long after other forms of corporal punishment, such as branding and ear cropping, had been abolished. Whipping had a long history in the South, of course, and not only on the slave plantations. The true symbol of authority and discipline at Parchman was a leather strap, three feet long and six inches wide, known as 'Black Annie,' which hung from the driver's belt. 'Black Annie' at Parchman Prison Farm, Mississippi from 'Worse than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice', by David M.
CORPORAL PUNISHMENT: Leather strap at Mississippi prison farm
