From the Texas Tribune: Texas Republican asks state to rename several of the state's prisons honoring slave owners

Many current penitentiaries were built up from plantations. Slaves wer3e transitioned into inmates.  

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The Darrington Unit, which imprisons about 1,700 men in Brazoria County, was named after John Darrington, from Alabama, who White called a “plantation mega owner." He sold the land the prison sits on to Texas after slavery was abolished, White said. Today’s inmates at the unit, mostly Black or Hispanic men, still harvest cotton without pay.

Thomas Goree, the namesake of a Huntsville prison, was a former slave owner and Confederate captain who became one of the first superintendents of a Texas prison, The Marshall Project reported. He was closely tied to the convict leasing program that killed thousands in Texas. The Eastham Unit is named after the landowners who bought Goree’s family plantation about 20 miles north of Huntsville and then used it for convict leasing, according to The Marshall Project.

A spokesperson for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice said the board appreciated the input from White, and that a number of factors are taken into consideration when reviewing or renaming prison units. White said he had already talked with the prison system’s leadership.