Brandon Jackson faces some of the same risks as his three times great-grandfather Andy Jackson, who could be among the Sugar Land 95.
As Harper searched for answers about Eph, she found us. Once we proved the Sugar Land 95 cemetery was misnamed, and that the real Bullhead Camp Cemetery was still out there somewhere in Sugar Land, we tried looking for it. We studied old maps and development proposals. We reread and cross-referenced every mention of the camp we could find. And we started looking for information about the people who could be buried there. People who labored and died under the convict-lease system.
Convict leasing in Sugar Land – and what came after – is actually a part of Harper’s family history in more ways than one. In the early 1940s, Eph Harper’s grandson lived with his wife and children in what was then the bustling company town of Sugar Land. Portia Harper’s grandfather was born there. Just a few months later, in February 1908, the state of Texas purchased Ellis’ plantation from the Imperial Sugar Company and began operating the Imperial Prison Farm there. The company decided to hold on to Cunningham’s 12,500-acre plantation, and it was on that land that the company town of Sugar Land was born.The official history of the Imperial Sugar Company and the “sweet” town that rose up around it was written by Robert M. Armstrong and published in 1991.
“They attacked the convict program in a hurry. Even before they finalized the Cunningham transaction in 1908, they had moved the entire convict population from the Cunningham farms over to the Ellis plantation.” “There's nothing that could be done to repair what was lost. Our family has been affected generationally,” Harper said. “Ultimately, the only thing that I can ask for at this time is the truth.”The truth, as Reginald Moore saw it, was bigger than the Sugar Land 95, bigger than the real Bullhead Camp Cemetery, bigger even than the thousands of other men and women buried unceremoniously across the state.
“Our history's been consistently torn apart by law enforcement, covered up by law enforcement. And this story with Sugar Land, it just continues to perpetuate that coverup” Portia Harper said.