Oscar Byron Ellis, director of a state prison farm in Tennessee, was hired as general manager, later director, of the Texas prison system; working from his base in Huntsville, he implemented a reform program that brought fundamental changes in the management of Texas prisons.erman L. Crow, Political History of the Texas Penal System, 1829–1951 (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Texas, 1964). Steve J. Martin and Sheldon Ekland-Olson, Texas Prisons: The Walls Came Tumbling Down (Austin: Texas Monthly Press, 1987).