A Fate Worse Than Slavery, Unearthed in Sugar Land

Prints depicting enslaved people producing sugar in Antigua, 1823

"The blood-drenched history that gave the city of Sugar Land, Tex., its name showed its face earlier this year, when a school construction crew discovered the remains of 95 African-Americans whose unmarked graves date back more than a century. The dead — some of whom may have been born in slavery — are victims of the infamous convict leasing system that arose after Emancipation. Southerners sought to replace slave labor by jailing African-Americans on trumped-up charges and turning them over to, among others, sugar cane plantations in the region once known as the Sugar Bowl of Texas. A bitter debate has erupted in Sugar Land, a fast-growing suburb southwest of Houston. Sugar Land officials, who want to move the remains to a nearby cemetery, are at odds with members of a city-appointed task force who rightly argue that a historical find of this magnitude should be memorialized on the spot where it was discovered. ..."

NY Times
W - Sugarcane

A display at the Sugar Land Heritage Museum and Visitor Center. At center, convicts harvesting sugar cane circa 1900.