Convict leasing symposium at Rice will place the ‘Sugar Land 95’ in national context

April event aims to shed greater light on once-forgotten practice and its influence on post-Civil War America

Since the April 2018 discovery of 95 bodies buried on land that once belonged to the Imperial State Prison Farm in Sugar Land, convict leasing has become a national topic of conversation. And while many Americans had never heard of this form of forced labor before then, historians have long studied the practice — which was, in essence, legalized slavery in a post-Civil War nation.

“Prisoners working construction, Convict Leasing Photograph 8,” Woodson Research Center – Fondren Library – Rice University

“Capitalism and Convict Leasing in the American South: A Symposium” seeks to shed greater light on the convict-leasing system and how it influenced American history.

The daylong symposium April 12 at Rice’s Glasscock School of Continuing Studies will feature four lectures by leading experts on the history of convict leasing. Co-sponsored by the Department of History, the symposium also received funding from Rice’s Humanities Research Center. It is free and open to the public.

“Convict leasing did not happen only in Texas,” said Caleb McDaniel, Rice associate professor of history and one of the symposium’s organizers. The goal of the lectures, he noted, is to place the story of Sugar Land in a wider context.

“The discovery of the remains of victims of convict leasing in Sugar Land has national significance,” he said. “Their story is part of a larger story about race, capitalism and the persistence of slavery in American history.”

The symposium will begin with opening remarks by Reginald Moore, founder of the Convict Leasing and Labor Project (CLLP). The activist, whose archives of the convict-leasing system in Fort Bend County reside at Rice’s Woodson Research Center, has long been instrumental in the preservation of the graves of 33 prisoners who died while working for the Imperial State Prison Farm and were buried on-site at the Old Imperial Farm Cemetery. Moore’s long-held belief that more bodies must be interred nearby was proved correct by the April 2018 discovery, now often referred to as the “Sugar Land 95.”

Reginald Moore stands near the headstone of Taylor Odon, a convict laborer buried at the Old Imperial Farm Cemetery who died in 1927 “tempting to escape.”

“For this symposium, we are bringing together leading experts on the history of convict leasing in the American South,” McDaniel said. “But we have asked them to prepare lectures with a broad audience in mind, since we know that many people in Houston and beyond have been following the story of the ‘Sugar Land 95.'”

Alex Lichtenstein, professor of history at Indiana University and the editor-in-chief of the American Historical Review, will speak at 9 a.m. He is a frequent commentator on the recent history of mass incarceration whose 1996 book, “Twice the Work of Free Labor,” was one of the first to call attention to the important role convict leasing played in the redevelopment of the post-Civil War South.

Talitha LeFlouria, associate professor in African and African-American studies at the University of Virginia, will speak at 11 a.m. She is the author of “Chained in Silence: Black Women and Convict Labor in the New South,” and her work has been featured in the Sundance-nominated documentary “Slavery by Another Name.”

Robert Perkinson, professor of American studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, will speak at 1 p.m. His first book, “Texas Tough: The Rise of America’s Prison Empire,” is a history of imprisonment, race and politics from slavery to the present with an emphasis on Texas, the most locked-down state in the nation. By tracing the story back to the 19th century, the book also draws troubling parallels between the development of Jim Crow, lynching and convict leasing in the aftermath of Reconstruction and the rise of mass imprisonment in the wake of civil rights.

Megan Ming Francis, associate professor of political science at the University of Washington and director of the Washington Institute for the Study of Inequality and Race, will speak at 2:30. She is the author of the award-winning book “Civil Rights and the Making of the Modern American State,” which tells the story of how the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s early campaign against state-sanctioned racial violence shaped the modern civil rights movement.

The symposium will conclude with a panel discussion featuring members of the CLLP and moderated by Rice’s associate dean of humanities, Lora Wildenthal. A reception will follow from 4:45 to 6 p.m.

Scholars, educators, students and members of the public are welcome; space is limited, so pre-registration is requested. Refreshments and boxed lunches will be provided to all registered participants.

Capitalism and Convict Leasing in the American South: A Symposium, April 12, 8:30 a.m.-6 p.m. For more information or to register, visit https://glasscock.rice.edu/node/9501.