African-American remains awaken history of convict-leasing system

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https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Human-lives-were-not-of-value-13518549.php

‘Human lives were not of value’

By Brooke A. Lewis
Reporter

Bill Mills experienced firsthand the cruel conditions of Sugar Land’s notorious Imperial Prison Farm.

“Human lives were not of value,” Mills wrote about Imperial Farm in his book “25 Years Behind Prison Bars.” “Nobody was relieved until he dropped in his tracks. The guards often said the men did not cost them any money and the mules did. That’s why there was more sympathy for the mules than for the men.”

More than a century later, near the land where Texas prisoners picked cotton under scorching sun amid threats of severe whippings, the discovery of 95 African-American remains at a Fort Bend school district construction site has put a new focus on the brutal history of the state’s convict-leasing system and the use of inmates to make money for the prisons.

“In the end, what this really was, was a replacement for the system of slavery that had existed before the Civil War,” said Douglas Blackmon, author of “Slavery By Another Name,” which details the convict-leasing system in the South. “There’s no place in America that proves that more powerfully than Sugar Land.”

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Paul Gardullo, the curator of the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, has applauded the efforts of local activist Reginald Moore to call attention to the site’s history. More than 200 historians, some from Ivy league institutions, signed a statement urging local officials to maintain the historical significance of the remains. Some have even called for a museum to remember those who suffered and perished in what was once known as the “Hellhole on the Brazos,” where conditions were so bad that the well-known bluesman Lead Belly wrote a song about it after spending time there.

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1. Fort Bend ISD finds historic cemetery near construction site

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Fort-Bend-ISD-finds-historic-cemetery-near-12839378.php?utm_campaign=twitter-premium&utm_source=CMS%20Sharing%20Button&utm_medium=social


The 31 marked graves inside Old Imperial Farm Cemetery are rusted and crumbling, markers of a time that Reginald Moore believes Sugar Land hopes to forget.

The 58-year-old has spent nearly two decades telling anyone who will listen about the old cemetery in Fort Bend County and how nearby areas may contain the graves of people who were part of the convict leasing system in Sugar Land. The statewide program, initiated shortly after slavery was outlawed more than 150 years ago, allowed prisoners, primarily African-Americans, to be contracted out for labor.

He relentlessly pushed city and school officials to study the open area near the cemetery and urged them not to build nearby. He watched anxiously as Fort Bend ISD began construction last year on a technical center within a mile and pleaded with them to conduct an archaeological survey first.

Now, city and school officials seem to be listening. Fort Bend ISD Superintendent Charles Dupre notified Moore this month that some 22 graves have been found on the construction site. Since the phone call, a school district official said, they’ve turned up more graves at the work site, thought to be 100 to 200 years old.

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2. After 10-15 yrs., I saw the film "Sounder" again. I was reminded

of the excessively cruel process AAs faced, dealing with he Deep South judicial system. It was enough to make me cringe throughout most of the movie. The Brooke Lewis article you posted, brings all that back, and then some.