Grave discovery unearths legacy of black convict labor
‘Sugar Land 95’ were worked into the ground
SUGAR LAND, Texas – Reginald Moore sank deep into silent prayer, an electric candle casting a glow on the countenance of Martin Luther King Jr. embossed on his black T-shirt.
Beside him on the steps of Sugar Land City Hall, 50 others paused in quiet reflection. Eyes closed. Heads bent. Flames flickering in their hands.
Moore shifted from side to side, as if communicating with a spirit. He silently mouthed an invocation. He lifted his hands to heaven.
His mind returned to the moment, a few months back, when he first saw the skeletal remains of 95 African-Americans discovered at a school construction site in Fort Bend County, about 20 miles southwest of Houston.
Moore faced the crowd gathered for an evening vigil in honor of the “Sugar Land 95.” They were there, a previous speaker said, to be the “voices of those ancestors who had been unearthed.”
That call – to give voice to those who have long gone unheard – is being echoed not just in Sugar Land but around the country where long-hidden gravesites of slaves, former slaves and free blacks have been uncovered in recent years – in a small park in New York City, on a plantation in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, on the campus of the University of Georgia, under a playground in Philadelphia.
For two decades, Moore, an activist, historian and former prison guard, had told officials that the ground held the bodies of people who died while in the convict leasing system. Preliminary analysis supported that conclusion.
Moore learned that much of Sugar Land, a sprawling, affluent suburb, had been home to plantations where sugar cane was harvested and boiled.
After the Civil War, land was sold to two Confederate veterans, Edward H. Cunningham and Littleberry A. Ellis, business partners who turned to convict leasing for cheap labor. Prison labor contracts often specified “Negro workers.”
Moore advised school officials not to build on the property, begged them to do archaeological surveys before starting construction.
For years, no one in Sugar Land wanted to address that part of the town’s legacy.
Until the remains were found on the school construction site, once known as “Ellis Camp No. 1.”
Suddenly, a light shone not just on Sugar Land but on a little-talked-about chapter of U.S. history.
Under convict leasing, which flour- ished across Southern states after the Civil War and into the early part of the 20th century, state governments leased out convicts as forced labor, exploiting a clause in the 13th Amendment that outlawed slavery except as punishment for a crime.
Until the “Sugar Land 95” are given a proper memorial and burial, Moore said, “those people are still in bondage.”
Where will they rest?
For the time being, the remains are stored in a blue storage pod on the school construction site by the rising frame of a new 200,000-square-foot vocational school.
The Fort Bend school district wants to relocate the remains to the Old Imperial Farm Cemetery, about a half-mile away. Moore said they do not belong at that graveyard, which is enclosed by a chain-link fence, holds mostly white prisoners who died after convict leasing ended, and is prone to flooding.
A task force, set up to recommend what to do with the remains, agreed – voting 19-1 to bury the “Sugar Land 95” on the land where they were discovered.
The school district filed a petition seeking permission to move the remains, but District Court Judge James Shoemake is not likely to make a decision until March. He appointed attorney Michael Elliott as a mediator to work toward a resolution.
The district contends that a school site is not the appropriate setting for a graveyard and memorial. The task force and community members, including Moore, say it is disrespectful to move the remains.