Florida

Name: Union Correctional Institution aka “The Sunshine Prison”

Capacity: 2,172 (mixed gender)

Founded: 1913

Who Owns It and General Facts:

Florida State owns the prison
The prison was built through convict leasing. (Miller, Vivien M., 18)
The birth of the Florida prison system happened after the Civil War in 1868. The state legislature “arranged to offset the new prison’s expenses with the returns of the labor of its prisoners,” according to One Dies, Get Another: Convict Leasing in the American South. (Crouch)

Land History:

Florida's earliest history involved groups of Native Americans like the Timucua, Calusa, Seminoles, and Apalachee. (M.)
Raidford is located in central Florida.
The United States acquired Florida from Spain in 1819. They didn’t pay any money to Spain but agreed to pay $5,000,000.00 for damages by Spaniards to the property of American citizens. This happened through the Transcontinental Treaty. Andrew Jackson was appointed the provincial governor of Florida, with headquarters at Pensacola. (Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia)
On Christmas night in 1951, Harry Tyson Moore became the first civil rights leader assassinated in the United States when a bomb placed beneath the bedroom of his home in Central Florida( Mims, Florida) exploded. It killed Moore and his wife, Harriett. For many years Moore was a fighter for civil rights in Florida. He led the first effort in Florida to get voting rights, achieve equal pay for black teachers, established the first state conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and spoke up about police brutality would occur in the state. (Clark, James C., 166)

Unusual Facts:

In 1922, inmates skilled in carpentry were put to the task of building Florida’s first electric chair.
Ted Bundy was executed at this prison.

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