Hi listeners, one quick note with this episode.

Some of the material covered here is a bit graphic

since the episode depicts prison life.

If you have a younger listener beside you,

you might want to listen through this episode yourself first

and make sure that it's suitable given the child's age.

It's an important historical story,

but we just want to give you a little warning.

Thanks for listening.

Roy Haber was going to see about a prisoner.

It was 1970 and he was driving from Jackson up Highway 51

through the Yazoo Delta to parchment farm.

Mississippi's oldest, biggest, and most brutal penitentiary.

I was going to this prison that was infamous

and I was basically a young kid lawyer coming from New York

to this wild country.

There's a vine called Kudzu which lines the highways

and covers the trees.

It's beautiful, but it kills them.

I remember seeing that for the first time.

The two lane road turns empty.

If it's one of those hot Mississippi days and the sun is scorching

...