Sugar Land’s sugar factory in 2012. (Ed T/flickr)
Federal law, which comes into play when a burial site may be eligible for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places, is more robust.
In such cases, construction must be halted while officials determine if the newly discovered burial grounds qualify based on the historic significance of the dead, the events surrounding their death, the burial materials or their prehistoric value.
I believe work on the entire school project should have been paused the moment the bodies were discovered. The Sugar Land mass grave has clear historic relevance, both as an endangered place and a remnant of the horrific but little-known chapter of black history that followed emancipation and Reconstruction.
Sugar Land official complied with Texas law, but they did not recognize the site’s national significance as a graveyard of the former Imperial State Prison Farm.
So the National Historic Preservation Act – which requires local officials to consult with the state and other “interested parties,” including the descendants of prison laborers throughout Texas – was not triggered.
Black history and suburban growth
Texas is among the fastest-growing states in the country. With little to no regulatory constraints, suburban developments – many named after plantation owners – have proliferated in major metro areas.
My ancestors were enslaved and forcibly brought to this area of Texas in the 1830s. Since I was a child, relatives have shared stories of the black bodies buried beneath suburbs in Sugar Land and Missouri City.
Indeed, Sugar Land officials knew that they might discover an old cemetery on the site of the proposed school.
For decades, a local advocate, Reginald Moore, had told local officials that prison laborers were likely buried in the area. As a result, an archaeologist was already on hand when the graveyard was discovered.
Exhumation occurred within days, without family members’ permission. News helicopters provided the public with aerial views of the bodies in wooden boxes.
Archaeologists determined that the dead had been black men, some as young as 14 years old. Their misshapen bones were a sign of repeated hard labor.
By July, images of handcuffs, chains and other artifacts buried with the bodies were being broadcast internationally.
The Southern convict-leasing system, which some historians consider have called “slavery by another name,” was laid bare for the world – and relatives of the dead – to see.
Memorializing a difficult history
The sudden media visibility changed the dynamics on the grave site.
In the months since the discovery, Sugar Land has begun consulting with outside groups, including Moore and his Convict Leasing and Labor Project, on the process of reinterment and memorializing the bodies.
Moore wants the remains reburied at the nearby Old Imperial Prison Farm Cemetery, which his group runs. He and others also say a museum should be dedicated to convict leasing.
The Black United Front, a civil rights group, hopes that the remains will be DNA tested so that reparations may be paid to the descendants.
Preserving while growing
When Native American remains are discovered, federal law mandates a very specific and careful set of next steps.
The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act recognizes the rights of “Indian tribes, and Native Hawaiian organizations to Native American cultural items, including human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony.”
No specific laws recognize the cultural and historic significance of African diaspora sites. That makes it much harder to protect black history.
Too often, African-American heritage sites like Sugar Land are simply paved over.
Of the 114 previously unmapped Texas freedom colonies my team has so far identified, for example, 21 are in high-risk locations near Texas’ fast-growing Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, San Antonio or Austin metro areas.
State officials now have the opportunity to reach out to freedom colony descendants, historians and experts about appropriate protection of the sites before the inevitable development begins in the area.
Of course, Texas is not the only state facing this problem. And the law doesn’t have all the answers.
The United States was built with black labor. As its population inexorably expands, city planners must look beyond the law – to technology, cultural practice, community and history – to reconcile preservation with growth.