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In 2018, evidence of human burials were discovered during the construction phase of the James Reese Career and Technical Center. Further investigations revealed a large, unmarked cemetery. The vast majority of those interred were convict laborers leased to area plantation owners Edward H. Cunningham and Littleberry A. Ellis from 1878-1911, until the site was converted into a state prison farm. Archival data suggests at least 95 individuals were buried here from 1879-1909, known during rediscovery as the “Sugar Land 95.” Archival names for the site include J.A. Freeman Camp, L.A. Ellis Camp #1, L.A. Ellis Camp #2, C.G. Ellis Camp #1, and Imperial State Prison Farm Camp #1.
Convict labor developed after the Civil War, due to a serious deficit of farm labor after the emancipation of enslaved people and the death of a quarter million men due to war. To find sources of cheap labor, lawmakers began passing laws, such as the Texas Black Codes (1866). These laws took advantage of loopholes within the 13th amendment allowing criminal conviction of freedmen for petty crimes or behaviors, such as vagrancy. These actions overwhelmed the prison system. State lawmakers turned to convict leasing to provide the state with income and planters with labor, while relieving prison overcrowding. African Americans, who made up 30 percent of Texas’ population but 60 percent of the convict population, were leased to local landowners to cultivate crops, primarily cotton and sugarcane, many times on plantations where they performed the same labor earlier as enslaved people. Corporal punishment guidelines were ignored and food and clothing quotas rarely met. In 1911, the era of convict labor camps gave way to a new era of state-owned prison farms. The discovery of this cemetery is instrumental in developing a full understanding of the convict labor system and its effects in this area.
HISTORIC TEXAS CEMETERY – 2021
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