April 2020

CDC data showed Black Americans were dying from COVID-19 at approximately 2.4 times the rate of white Americans through 2020–2021. Structural factors included higher rates of essential worker employment with no remote-work option (food service, transit, health aides, meatpacking), lower rates of health insurance, higher prevalence of underlying conditions rooted in poverty and environmental racism, residential crowding, and reduced access to quality healthcare. Early vaccine rollouts in some states prioritized age, disadvantaging younger Black essential workers. Black Americans constituted roughly 13% of the U.S. population but 23% of early COVID deaths.

Between December 2019 and February 2020, at least 29 people died in Mississippi state prisons — 13 of them in the first three weeks of 2020 alone. Most were in facilities with Black majority populations. Mississippi Delta Correctional Facility, Parchman Farm (Mississippi State Penitentiary), and South Mississippi Correctional Institution were sites of extreme violence enabled by severe understaffing and gang activity. The DOJ opened a civil rights investigation in April 2020. Parchman Farm has a history rooted in convict leasing and was designed to exploit Black prisoners for labor after the Civil War. A federal consent agreement was reached in 2022 requiring reforms.

Between December 2019 and February 2020, at least 29 people died in Mississippi state prisons — 13 in the first three weeks of 2020 alone — in facilities with Black majority populations. The DOJ opened a civil rights investigation in April 2020. Parchman Farm has a history rooted in convict leasing designed to exploit Black prisoners for labor after the Civil War. A federal consent agreement was reached in 2022 requiring reforms.