“We Remember” by Debbie Cutler
Debbie Cutler has been a writer for more than 30 years and has been published in dozens of magazines. She resides in Columbia, Missouri.
Author Foreword:
Recently I wrote a Q&A on University of Missouri History Alumni Bruce Lemmie*. While interviewing him on the events of his life, his ancestral history, and his involvement with the Buffalo Soldiers National Museum’s exhibit on Black USA Soldiers through the country’s history, I asked “anything else?” It was then, he told me about a project called Sugar Land 95, a memorial for Black lives lost in Sugar Land, Texas, just outside of Houston. His reflection on the latter project struck me like a punch to the gut. After the Civil War ended, the Texas correctional system allowed convict leasing of Black men and women for menial, undesirable, and often dangerous jobs. Recently, a site was discovered where 95 of those Black individuals died at the hands of the landowners as punishment for various crimes — some as menial as spitting on the sidewalk. Lemmie, now retired, is working with several groups to help build a memorial site in honor of the Sugar Land 95.
*This piece was written in reflection of the experiences and words of Mr. Bruce Lemmie and in acknowledgment of the souls of the Sugar Land 95.
I can only imagine
the Sugar Land 95
linked as one
in wake and sleep.
Five in a row, shackled
in the summer heat
boiling and blistering their skin;
and through the winter cold
thickening their blood.
Forced to toil
hard, incessant hours
for work, nobody else would dare.
Plantations, railways, and mines
where precious lives were cheap and disposable;
where the average lifespan…
about two years?
“More where they came from.”
I can only imagine
the sweat,
the threats,
the preset value of human life.
Prisoners day and night
some starved,
some beaten,
some shot even
for menial crimes.
I can only imagine
the helpless feeling
seeing fellow souls, one by one
bodies weakened;
fearing they would be among those
buried hastily
in wooden caskets, unmarked graves
near the soil they toiled on.
Forgotten.
We remember.
