The Sugarland 95

I arrived at about 3:45 after getting out of a class. I assumed that a panel on the unmarked remains of convicts threatened by a school board might have a fairly empty room. The size of the room indicated the turnout expected. I sat at the front, and plugged my laptop into the wall plugin behind me. My cord was promptly stepped on by an older woman and I ended up writing everything down on paper, since my computer died.

By 3:58 the room was filled at the tables and chairs around the room.

By 4:05 there were 2-3 rows of people standing at the edges of the room and people sitting in the middle of the 'u-shaped' tables. The speakers at the front were encroached upon by the multicultural body of the University of Houston History students.

I don't know if you've ever been in a 'grassroots organisation' or if you know what the energy in a room like that is like, but that's what I felt. This mix of excitement of a larger purpose.

The panel consisted of 3 people.

Reginald Moore of the Convict Labor Leasing Project in Texas (CLLPTX). Moore was a correctional officer who saw the inside of a prison and works to transition prisoners after they are released and find the history of prisons.

Sam Collins, another member of the CLLPTX, is a dynamic speaker who focuses on where the money will be spent.

Brooke Lewis has been covering the Sugarland 95 story since it began in April 2018 on the Houston Chronicle.

Moore holds that slavery ended because it could not compete with convict labor. Plantation owners could rent out convicts to do work and not pay them or pay for their food. Sometimes if a jail warden had a debt to a plantation owner, the labor would be free. When this practice of renting slaves became more prominent, slavery became too expensive. On December 5th, 1865 is was decreed that 'you are free unless convicted of a crime.' After that, there were more imprisoned per capita than enslaved.

Convict leasing became slavery by another name. One inside account of the prisons come from Bill Mills, a white convict who wrote a book 25 Years Behind Prison Bars, after his experiences in the convict leasing systems, near the end of the program.

What struck me the most was the fact that the program gained a lot of momentum during February, Black History Month. When you are part of a 'social justice group' like this, you see that they are not filled with people expecting to see their names in history books. They are a group who defend and support each other in hopes that someone will join and make the cause larger. They unite based on their ideas and sense of right versus wrong.

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Human-lives-were-not-of-value-13518549.php

https://legacy.lib.utexas.edu/taro/ricewrc/00857/rice-00857.html

You can find the Convict Leasing Labor Project TX on Facebook.

Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Detroit Publishing Company Collection, LC-D428-850