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Bodies believed to be those of 95 black forced-labor prisoners from Jim Crow era unearthed in Sugar Land after one man’s quest
Today the city of Sugar Land is a sprawling suburb southwest of Houston, home to Imperial Sugar Company, shopping malls and endless cul-de-sacs. But, more than a century ago, it was a sprawling network of sugar cane plantations and prison camps. Sugar Land was better known then as the Hellhole on the Brazos. From sun up to sun down, convicts who were leased by the state to plantation owners toiled in the fields chopping sugar cane sometimes until they “dropped dead in their tracks,” as the State Convention of Colored Men of Texas complained in 1883.
In modern-day Sugar Land it was all easy to forget — but not for one man named Reggie Moore, who couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Moore started researching Sugar Land’s slavery and convict-leasing history after spending time working as a prison guard at one of Texas’s oldest prisons, but his curiosity evolved into obsession. He had a hunch. Based on what he learned, he believed that the bodies of former slaves and black prisoners were still buried in Sugar Land’s backyard. He focused his attention on a site called the Imperial State Prison Farm, the one that bore the name of the country’s premier sugar company.
For 19 years he searched for their bodies, stopping just short of sticking a shovel in the dirt himself.
“I felt like I had to be a voice for the voiceless,” said Moore, who is African American.
This week, his quest produced results.
At the former Imperial State Prison Farm site, archaeologists have unearthed an entire plot of precise rectangular graves for 95 souls, each buried 2 to 5 feet beneath the soil in nearly disintegrated pinewood caskets. The 19th century cemetery was unmarked, with no vestige of its existence visible from the surface.
“This place was almost truly lost to history,” archaeologist Reign Clark of Goshawk Environmental Consulting told The Washington Post.
The graves were found, really, by accident. The local Fort Bend Independent School District began construction on a new school at the former prison site in October, deciding to hire an archaeologist to supervise the work after Moore’s warnings of the possible burial site, a spokeswoman said. In February, a backhoe operator happened to see something jutting out of the dirt. He thought it was a human bone.
Archaeologists called to the site began digging. Upon the eventual discovery of the 95 bodies this spring, they began exhuming the remains in June. On Monday, they released a preliminary analysis.
Clark said they believe, almost without a doubt, that the graves belong to black prisoners — among them former slaves.
“Considering who owned the property and what the property was used for throughout time,” Clark said, “it would be 10,000 to 1 that it’s not the convict-lease cemetery.”
At the site, the archaeologists found chains, but found few personal effects inside the graves save for a single ring. Of the roughly two dozen intact skeletons the archaeologists have analyzed so far, all had African American traits, bioarchaeologist Catrina Banks Whitley told The Post. They all appeared to be muscularly built, many with the same misshapen bones that indicate repetitive wear — indicating hard labor, she said.
They were estimated to be as young as 14 and as old as 70.
The unearthed gravesite recalls one of the darkest periods of American history, historians and archaeologists told The Post. The discovery may vindicate Moore. But more crucially, he said, it vindicates the prisoners whose backbreaking work helped rebuild the state of Texas in the ruins of the post-Civil War era without so much as a proper burial to acknowledge their contributions.
“I think we’re going to be able to paint a very vivid picture of how these people lived and what they went through here,” Clark said. “This is a completely rare site. It’s going to change how we think about Texas history and how we think about ourselves and how we built this state, how all of us built this state.”
Today the city of Sugar Land is a sprawling suburb southwest of Houston, home to Imperial Sugar Company, shopping malls and endless cul-de-sacs. But, more than a century ago, it was a sprawling network of sugar cane plantations and prison camps. Sugar Land was better known then as the Hellhole on the Brazos. From sun up to sun down, convicts who were leased by the state to plantation owners toiled in the fields chopping sugar cane sometimes until they “dropped dead in their tracks,” as the State Convention of Colored Men of Texas complained in 1883.
In modern-day Sugar Land it was all easy to forget — but not for one man named Reggie Moore, who couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Moore started researching Sugar Land’s slavery and convict-leasing history after spending time working as a prison guard at one of Texas’s oldest prisons, but his curiosity evolved into obsession. He had a hunch. Based on what he learned, he believed that the bodies of former slaves and black prisoners were still buried in Sugar Land’s backyard. He focused his attention on a site called the Imperial State Prison Farm, the one that bore the name of the country’s premier sugar company.
For 19 years he searched for their bodies, stopping just short of sticking a shovel in the dirt himself.
“I felt like I had to be a voice for the voiceless,” said Moore, who is African American.
This week, his quest produced results.
At the former Imperial State Prison Farm site, archaeologists have unearthed an entire plot of precise rectangular graves for 95 souls, each buried 2 to 5 feet beneath the soil in nearly disintegrated pinewood caskets. The 19th century cemetery was unmarked, with no vestige of its existence visible from the surface.
“This place was almost truly lost to history,” archaeologist Reign Clark of Goshawk Environmental Consulting told The Washington Post.
The graves were found, really, by accident. The local Fort Bend Independent School District began construction on a new school at the former prison site in October, deciding to hire an archaeologist to supervise the work after Moore’s warnings of the possible burial site, a spokeswoman said. In February, a backhoe operator happened to see something jutting out of the dirt. He thought it was a human bone.
Archaeologists called to the site began digging. Upon the eventual discovery of the 95 bodies this spring, they began exhuming the remains in June. On Monday, they released a preliminary analysis.
Clark said they believe, almost without a doubt, that the graves belong to black prisoners — among them former slaves.
“Considering who owned the property and what the property was used for throughout time,” Clark said, “it would be 10,000 to 1 that it’s not the convict-lease cemetery.”
At the site, the archaeologists found chains, but found few personal effects inside the graves save for a single ring. Of the roughly two dozen intact skeletons the archaeologists have analyzed so far, all had African American traits, bioarchaeologist Catrina Banks Whitley told The Post. They all appeared to be muscularly built, many with the same misshapen bones that indicate repetitive wear — indicating hard labor, she said.
They were estimated to be as young as 14 and as old as 70.
The unearthed gravesite recalls one of the darkest periods of American history, historians and archaeologists told The Post. The discovery may vindicate Moore. But more crucially, he said, it vindicates the prisoners whose backbreaking work helped rebuild the state of Texas in the ruins of the post-Civil War era without so much as a proper burial to acknowledge their contributions.
“I think we’re going to be able to paint a very vivid picture of how these people lived and what they went through here,” Clark said. “This is a completely rare site. It’s going to change how we think about Texas history and how we think about ourselves and how we built this state, how all of us built this state.”
