Community members, including descendants of the Sugar Land 95, gathered on June 19th to celebrate the Texas Historical Marker placed on the burial site. (Valeria Escobar/Community Impact)
A Texas Historical Marker has been added near the Fort Bend ISD James T. Reese Career and Technical Center to honor the group of incarcerated people who were unearthed during its construction in 2018.
Known as the Sugar Land 95, the group consisted of 95 African Americans—many born into slavery and later incarcerated through Reconstruction-era Black Codes—who were forced into Texas’ convict leasing system, a legal form of slavery where African American people were imprisoned for minor or false infractions and leased to private landowners…