The blues returns to Mississippi's Parchman Prison Farm

Inmate/students practice blues harmonica during a classroom session of the Blues Tradition in American Literature course inside Parchman Prison in Mississippi. (John Burnett)

PARCHMAN, Miss. — Nine big men sit attentively at their desks inside the Mississippi State Penitentiary—the once infamous prison labor colony known as Parchman Farm. They're wearing green-and-white striped pants, and shirts with "MDOC convict" stenciled on the back, for Mississippi Department of Corrections.

Their crimes range from drug possession to armed robbery to homicide. But inside this austere classroom, they're all college students.