.... The state needed a warden who knew how to run a plantation.

The prisoners picked cotton and the state collected the money. Most of the prisoners were black; all the guards were white. The facility was so understaffed that the warden picked a group of obedient inmates to work as "trusty-shooters." These men wore vertical stripes and carried rifles, and if an inmate in the field tried to run off, the trusty-shooter was supposed to shoot him....