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Darrington prison is named after a slave plantation. Draper is named after a KKK leader. Goree Unit is named after a Confederate captain.
We talk a lot about racist monuments & team names, but here’s a look at prison names - which are just as bad: https://www.themarshallproject.org/2020/07/29/will-the-reckoning-over-racist-names-include-these-prisons
We talk a lot about racist monuments & team names, but here’s a look at prison names - which are just as bad: https://www.themarshallproject.org/2020/07/29/will-the-reckoning-over-racist-names-include-these-prisons
Some of the most obviously problematic names are the ones named after plantations - like Darrington. Here’s a picture of prisoners there earlier this year.
In case you are wondering, they are not paid. They can still be punished if they do not work. They still grow cotton.
In case you are wondering, they are not paid. They can still be punished if they do not work. They still grow cotton.
Yes that's right, they still grow cotton. At a prison literally named after a plantation. Here's more on the Texas prison system's cotton operations generally.
There are 200+ acres at Darrington right now. https://www.chron.com/about/article/Texas-prisons-lose-500-000-of-inmate-grown-12256850.php
There are 200+ acres at Darrington right now. https://www.chron.com/about/article/Texas-prisons-lose-500-000-of-inmate-grown-12256850.php
But that is not the only prison named after a plantation. This is Caledonia in North Carolina. It is named after Caledonia Plantation.
(Photo credits are all spelled out in the story.)
(Photo credits are all spelled out in the story.)
As one historian pointed out, there were other things they could have named the place: “But the state opted to actually keep that name in what I would say is a kind of intentional choice.”
(FWIW, they're the only DOC that responded saying they were evaluating a name change.)
(FWIW, they're the only DOC that responded saying they were evaluating a name change.)
In Arkansas, Cummins is named after a plantation as well.
(Side note, I enlisted multiple historians & we spent a truly stupid number of hours figuring out who Cummins was & if he was a slave holder and his name was likely William & yes he was.)
(Side note, I enlisted multiple historians & we spent a truly stupid number of hours figuring out who Cummins was & if he was a slave holder and his name was likely William & yes he was.)
But it’s not just the plantation names. In some states - like Texas - a lot of prisons are named after people, including Confederates, slave holders, segregationists and more.
For instance, Thomas Goree is the namesake of the Goree Unit in Texas - but he was also a Confederate captain, slave holder and big name in convict leasing. He oversaw a prison system that still whipped men, and routinely tortured them in some hair-curling ways.
For example: at a leasing camp in the Goree's era men who didn't work hard enough were dangled from a homemade stockade until they lost control of their bowels. In a 4-month period, 18 out of 80 died. Two cut off their hands - & the sgt in charge made them keep working anyway.
That was called the Mineola Horror, & Goree defended the system that allowed it: “There are, of course, many men in the penitentiary who will not be managed by kindness," he said.
Plus, he explained, prisoners in the South needed to be treated differently because they were different from those in the North: “There, the majority of men are white.”
Incidentally, Goree owned a lot of plantation land, some of which eventually became the Eastham Unit.
The Easthams were later landowners who used it for convict leasing.
The Easthams were later landowners who used it for convict leasing.
The Hobby Unit is named after William P. Hobby, who was a segregationist among other things:
One of the ones I found most surprisingly egregious is the Wallace Pack Unit. That’s the one that keeps getting sued, and is on trial right now over bad handling of COVID.
The namesake was a warden who tried to murder a Black prisoner.
The namesake was a warden who tried to murder a Black prisoner.
The prisoner - Eroy Brown - ended up killing the warden and a major but it was such an obvious case of self-defense that three juries let him off. Here’s more on that case: https://www.texasobserver.org/the-trials-of-eroy-brown/
In Alabama, the Draper Correctional Center is named after Hamp Draper, a state prison director who also served as an interim leader—or “imperial representative”— in the Ku Klux Klan
In New York City, one member of the Riker family - namesake of Rikers Island - was a judge notorious for abusing the Fugitive Slave Act to send free Blacks into slavery. https://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20150722/hunts-point/petition-seeks-new-name-for-rikers-island-over-historic-ties-slavery/
That’s just a sampling of a few places named after problematic people. Like I said before, a lot of prisons are named after places - but some of those places are themselves named after really problematic/racist people, esp. in the South.
For example, Forrest City federal prison is named after the place, Forrest City… which is named after a Confederate general and KKK Grand Wizard, Nathan Bedford Forrest.
In Georgia, Lee State Prison is in Lee County, which is named in honor of Henry Lee III, the patriarch of a slave-owning family and the father of Robert E. Lee.
A little further northeast, Lee County in South Carolina—which shares a name with the violence-plagued Lee Correctional Institution—is named after Robert E. Lee.
When you start looking at prisons named after places that are named after problematic people, the list is seemingly endless in the South. I just included a small sampling in this story. https://www.themarshallproject.org/2020/07/29/will-the-reckoning-over-racist-names-include-these-prisons
But of course, as some people pointed out, whatever you call a prison it is still a prison. Would it be any better if we named these places after inspiring people?
“If you are talking about the inhumanity, the daily violence these prisons perform, then who these prisons are named after is useful in understanding that,” said @MonicaMnzMtz. “But what would it do to name it after somebody inspiring? It’s still a symbol of oppression.”
“Symbols of hate encourage hate, so it has been time to remove the celebration of figures whose fame is predicated on pain &torture of Black ppl,” @deray said. "That doesn’t replace the work that has to be done: We remove the name while we also work to remove the inst. itself.”
To @AnthonyCGraves racist prison names are a “slap in the face of the justice system itself.”
New names could be a powerful signal of new priorities, he said.
New names could be a powerful signal of new priorities, he said.
“At the end of the day the mentality in these prisons is still, ‘This is my plantation and you are my slaves,’” he said. “To change that we have to start somewhere and maybe if we change the name we can start to change the culture.”
