Bukka White’s “Parchman Farm Blues,” recorded in 1940, stands as one of the most searing testimonies in the Delta blues tradition. The song is rooted in White’s own incarceration at Mississippi State Penitentiary, better known as Parchman Farm, and it captures with raw honesty the despair, loss, and

I first encountered Sam Cooke in a meaningful way during my freshman year of college, when I picked up a compilation album entitled Portrait of a Legend: 1951–1964. Growing up, I had certainly heard “A Change Is Gonna Come” and other Cooke classics, but like many people of my

This week we continue exploring songs of prison protest and the ongoing fight for social reform. Instead of focusing on a single track, I want to highlight an entire body of work: Archie Shepp’s 1972 album Attica Blues. Created in the immediate aftermath of the Attica Prison Rebellion, the

To launch our September series, we turn to prison protest songs through the lens of Foundational Black Americans. These songs form a cultural archive of survival and resistance — from the chain gangs of the Mississippi Delta to the prison fields of Louisiana’s Angola, and on into the age of