The Changing Same of Race and Racism in Sugar Land, Texas: Memorializing The Sugar Land 95

A total of 95 Black men who were murdered during the convict lease era in Sugar Land, Texas were unearthed on a construction site for a new Fort Bend Independent School District (FBISD) school in 2018. These men would become known as the Sugar Land 95 (SL95). Memorializing the SL95, creating a cemetery, and searching for descendants became a point of conflict between FBISD and the local Black community who felt the school district’s efforts were subpar. After the murder of George Floyd in 2020, FBISD attempted to improve their efforts with minimal funding. This resulted in inaccuracies on historical markers, erroneous genealogical results, and burial ceremonies that excluded the descendant community. Sugar Land has had a long legacy of diluting Black history in order to redeem white subjectivity. This pattern has occurred in history curricula, local historical narrative, and cultural heritage projects like The SL95 Memorialization Project. Through the notion of racialized geography, silences in historical narrative, and the rejection of subjugated knowledges, I aim not only to demonstrate how the poor memorialization of the SL95 is a new manifestation of the same anti-Black racism that has existed in cultural heritage projects in the US, but also that Black resistance remains and continues to create new methods of preservation and memorialization.