In 2018, construction of the James Reese Career and Technical Center uncovered evidence of human burials, and further investigation revealed a large unmarked cemetery where archival data suggests at least 95 individuals were buried from 1879-1909. The vast majority of those interred were convict laborers leased to plantation owners Edward H. Cunningham and Littleberry A. Ellis from 1878-1911, until the site became a state prison farm, and the group became 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 amid a severe farm labor shortage following emancipation and the deaths of a quarter million men in the war. Lawmakers sought cheap labor through laws such as the 1866 Texas Black Codes, using loopholes in the 13th Amendment to criminally convict freedmen for petty crimes or behaviors such as vagrancy, overwhelming the prison system. State lawmakers then used convict leasing to generate state income, supply planters with labor, and reduce prison overcrowding. African Americans, who were 30 percent of Texas’ population but 60 percent of its convict population, were leased to local landowners to cultivate chiefly cotton and sugarcane, often on the same plantations where they had previously been enslaved. Corporal punishment guidelines were ignored, and required food and clothing quotas were rarely met. In 1911, convict labor camps gave way to state-owned prison farms, and the cemetery provides important evidence for understanding this labor system and its effects in the area.
