Dozens of inmates have died while in custody at the Harris County Jail, according to attorneys representing victims' families. The FBI has opened civil rights investigations into two of the deaths.

Texas lawmakers voted to remove the word "Negro" from geographic features in 1991. But a federal board blocked the proposed name changes, and since then, almost none of them have been changed.

In 1947 in Harris County, Georgia, an African-American man named Henry “Peg” Gilbert was arrested and jailed, without legal cause. Five days later, a...