Fort Bend remains
Fort Bend County officials urge school trustees to halt construction at a site where remains were found of 95 African-Americans believed to be former prisoners.
Newly elected Fort Bend County Commissioner Ken DeMerchant couldn’t sleep after attending a Martin Luther King Jr. Day event honoring the 95 human remains discovered last year at a school district construction site.
He decided to organize a meeting with other elected officials to discuss the matter.
“I felt moved to do something right for these people,” said DeMerchant, whose Precinct 4 includes the area where the remains were discovered. “Those 95 people, they don’t have a voice. They need somebody to speak on their behalf.”
The meeting led several elected Fort Bend County officials to urge school trustees Tuesday to halt construction at the site where 95 African-Americans’ remains were found. The officials said the remains should stay in their longtime resting place and not be moved from the construction site where the district is building a new technical center. Community activists have voiced a similar plea for months.
"We have the chance to demonstrate to the nation that Fort Bend ISD, the City of Sugar Land, and Fort Bend County are jointly committed to leading the way in being on the right side of history; most importantly, we have the ability to show future generations that we are committed to doing the right thing, even when it may
be the more difficult path to take," the officials wrote in a letter emailed Tuesday to Fort Bend ISD board members.
The letter was signed by three newly elected officials: District Attorney Brian Middleton, County Judge KP George and DeMerchant. Other signatories include U.S. Rep. Al Green, state Rep. Ron Reynolds and state Sen. Borris L. Miles. All are Democrats. The three other commissioners, who did not sign the letter, said they were not aware of it.
In the letter, the officials state they will be present at the Feb. 18 school board meeting, where "they look forward to discussing alternative plans." The remains discovered at the site are believed to be former prisoners who were part of the convict-leasing system, through which inmates were contracted out to perform cheap labor across the state.
Jason Burdine, school board president, said the Fort Bend ISD welcomes any partnership and financial support the elected officials can provide to assist the district. He noted that the district has spent nearly $5 million since the discovery, and said changing course would cost an additional $18 million.
“We appreciate the concern of the coalition of community members and elected officials who have reached out to the Fort Bend ISD Board of Trustees and we agree whole-heartedly that the victims of the State of Texas’ convict-leasing system suffered systemic and oppressive injustices,” Burdine said in a response emailed to the Houston Chronicle. “We look forward to exploring all options that both show respect for the 95 lives that were lost to this horrific state-sanctioned practice and that also relieve the burden to Fort Bend ISD taxpayers.”
Middleton said his role as Fort Bend County’s first African-American district attorney influenced his decision to sign the letter.
“If it’s not handled properly, it will make the county look bad,” said Middleton. “I felt like I could lend my voice to it in hopes that the right thing would be done with respect to these bodies. I have no authority to dictate, but I’m just lending my opinion as a black man, as a newly elected leader.”
Green described the meeting that prompted the letter “historic.”
“These are people of goodwill who wanted to go on record as being in opposition to an injustice being perpetrated once again upon people who were unjustly incarcerated and lost their lives under a system that allowed them to be worked literally to death,” said Green.
Taral Patel, George’s chief of staff, said the county judge was familiar with the issue as a former school board member.
“These people, during their lifetime, they got no semblance of justice,” said Patel. “We as a civilized society need to do whatever we can to give them some sense of justice by keeping them in their rightful resting place. That was the goal of this letter.”
The school district filed a petition in November to move the remains to the nearby Old Imperial Farm Cemetery. State District judge James H. Shoemake appointed attorney Michael W. Elliott to work with interested parties to find a solution, but the school district filed an objection to his appointment.
The district has since asked an appeals court for permission to move the remains and remove Elliott from the case.
Fort Bend ISD announced last month that applications were open for students to enroll at the facility under construction, to be known as the James Reese Career and Technical Center. They also held an informational meeting about the educational programs offered at the technical center last month at the Hilton Garden Inn.
The elected officials did not disclose an immediate solution for coming up with the money associated with halting construction and keeping the remains at the site, but they said they thought a solution was possible.
“Everybody is talking about the money involved,” said Middleton. “That’s important, but sometimes things are so important that we have to spend the money that’s necessary to do the right thing. I don’t know exactly how to fund it, but I think the effort should be made to fund it because it’s the right thing to do. Every now and then in life, we face these challenges. The right thing may not be the easiest thing.”