Texas prisons are named after slave owners. This is 2021, right?
Texas prisons carry the legacy of slavery. They shouldn’t.
An inmate works outdoors on the "hoe quad" outside a modern-day Texas prison unit in Huntsville, Texas on Thursday, June 25, 2015. (Rose Baca/The Dallas Morning News)(Staff Photographer)
In the midst of the nation’s reckoning with social justice issues and Confederate statues, it is time that corrections facilities in Texas no longer bear the names of people celebrated for their participation in slavery and Jim Crow politics.
This isn’t a new idea but one that state Rep. James White, R-Woodville, is the latest to put on the table. Recently, he asked the Texas Department of Criminal Justice to rename the Darrington, Goree and Eastham prisons in southeast Texas to honor those who have made positive contributions to criminal justice, such as judges, chaplains, and fallen correctional officers. We urge the Texas Department of Criminal Justice to rename these units and any others that carry the scars of racial division.