The remains believed to be of 95 black slaves and prisoners who were forced into labor after the Civil War have been unearthed in Texas.
The discovery was made at a construction site in Sugar Land, a suburb of Houston.
Through the turn of the century, prisons would often loan inmates to local farms to work the fields, sometimes until they "dropped dead in their tracks," the State Convention of Colored Men of Texas stated in 1883.
Reggie Moore got wind of the Texas convict-leasing system when he served as a guard at one of the state’s oldest prisons, The Washington Post reported. He wanted to learn more, and concentrated his efforts on property of the former Imperial State Prison Farm.
"I felt like I had to be a voice for the voiceless," Moore, who is himself African-American, said of his 19-year quest, the Post reported.
This week, an unmarked cemetery was discovered containing 95 bodies buried two to five feet below the surface in pine caskets.
Archaeologist Reign Clark of Goshawk Environmental Consulting told The Washington Post that “this place was almost truly lost to history."
Although unmarked, Clark believes without question the graves are of blacks within the Texas prison system forced into labor and former slaves.
“Considering who owned the property and what the property was used for throughout time,” Clark told the Post, “it would be 10,000 to 1 that it’s not the convict-lease cemetery.”
Archaeologists working the site also uncovered chains but very little in the way of personal effects, save for a single ring.
While the site’s discovery gives justification to Moore’s quest, more importantly it gives voice to the prisoners and what they had to endure.
“I think we’re going to be able to paint a very vivid picture of how these people lived and what they went through here,” Clark said, The Washington Post reported. “This is a completely rare site. It’s going to change how we think about Texas history and how we think about ourselves and how we built this state, how all of us built this state.”
© 2026 Newsmax. All rights reserved.