TEXAS

As of December 31, 2019, the number of prisoners under the jurisdiction of Texas correctional authorities was 158,429 located in 61 state prisons and held in custody of private prisons or local jails. State operated facilities had a staff of 35,000 employees and a budget of $‭3,287,273,079 (National Institute of Corrections)

Huntsville, Texas

Name: Texas State Penitentiary at Huntsville or Huntsville Unit (nicknamed "Walls Unit")

Capacity: 1,705 (men)

Founded: 1849

Who Owns It:

• Texas State Correctional owns the Walls Unit

• During the Civil War, the Wall Unit housed Union prisoners of war. The Texas State Penitentiary opened in 1849 in Huntsville, TX. (Tucker, Clyde) This was only one year after the state legislature created the penitentiary system and was the first state prison to exist. It became known as the “Walls Unit” for the 15-foot brick wall that surrounds the prison yard. The first inmate, William G. Sansom, was imprisoned at the Walls Unit in 1849 for cattle theft. Elizabeth Huffman was the first female to be incarcerated in 1854 for infanticide. (Jackson, 42)

Land History:

• The Cenis tribe are the earliest known residents of the area that is now Huntsville, TX. They lived between the San Jacinto and Trinity rivers, where they raised corn crops which they traded with western Indians for horses, hides, and Spanish goods. The Cenis were wiped out in 1780. Invading tribes that had been driven from their ancestral land along the Mississippi River took over their land. (Teffler, J., Handbook of Texas)

• Huntsville, TX, was founded in 1835/1836 by Pleasant and Ephraim Gray as a native American trading post and was named for Huntsville, Alabama, the former home of the Gray family. Huntsville acquired a post office on June 9, 1837, with Ephraim Gray as the first postmaster. The Grays' trading post was well situated to trade with the Bidai, Alabama, and Coushatta native tribes. Relations between these groups and the early settlers around Huntsville appear to have been chiefly nonviolent. As trade along the Trinity River flourished and colonists landed to exploit timber, Huntsville became the center of growing activity. The 1840s and 1850s saw the arrival of a few relatively well-to-do families from the Carolinas, Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee. Huntsville was also the home of numerous prominent Texans, including Sam Houston. (Dwyer and Holder, Handbook of Texas)

• Reports were written about a family of 6 Black Texans who were essentially lynched in Huntsville, TX, in 1918. The family's patriarch was killed apparently for resisting arrest as a "draft dodger" and supposedly pulled a gun on the officer who was apprehending him. The police claimed, in response, that his entire family planned to murder the officer who killed Mr. Cabaniss. So, a mob shot up the home of the Cabaniss family with the family inside, and then the home supposedly began to burn down for unknown reasons. (The San Antonio Light, June 1, 1918) 

Unusual Facts:

• A now-empty field near the Huntsville Unit once hosted "The Wildest Show Behind Bars," the Texas Prison Rodeo. The rodeo was launched in 1931 during the Great Depression and was initially held on a baseball field. (Roth, Mitchel P., 9) Johnny Cash played his first show at the Texas Prison Rodeo in 1956. The event was also featured in the 1980 film Urban Cowboy starring John Travolta. The rodeo ended in 1986. (Texas State Historical Association)

• Federico "Fred" Gomez Carrasco and two other incarcerated men held people hostage in the library building of the Walls Unit in the Summer of 1974. "Fred" Carrasco was serving a life sentence for the attempted murder of a police officer. Having smuggled pistols and ammunition into the prison, he and two other men took eleven prison workers and four inmates hostage. (Harper, William T.) Eleven days into the standoff, the incarcerated men tried to escape. They left the library toward a getaway vehicle in a handmade shield consisting of legal books taped to mobile blackboards that were later dubbed by the press the "Trojan Taco." Inside the shield were the three convicts and four hostages, while eight other hostages ringed the exterior of the "taco." Texas Rangers and prison guards established a plan where they blasted the group with fire hoses. However, a rupture in the hose gave the men holding people hostage time to fatally shoot the two women hostages who had volunteered to join the convicts in the getaway car. When prison officials returned fire, Carrasco committed suicide, and one of his two accomplices, Rodolpho Dominguez, was killed. The other involved was held at the Ellis Unit while on death row and executed on May 23, 1991. (Harper, William T.)

• 75% of prisons in Texas are not air-conditioned. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice says that 22 inmates died from heat-related illnesses between 1998 and 2017. But experts say that number is almost certainly higher. (MSNBC)

 
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