Sugar Land 95 Cemetery

FBISD/MASS Design Group Engagement Session #4 Synthesis

 

On May 4, 2022 FBISD hosted the fourth of four community engagement sessions led by the MASS Design Group to collect community input on the Sugar Land 95 Memorialization Project. The workshop Reporting Back to the Community. The workshop began with an brief reintroduction of MASS, project updates, and recap of the engagement synthesis.

MASS presented the key outcomes from the previous three engagement sessions and the project’s four key priorities. MASS then described the workshop goal and activity, including community standards that would occur in Zoom breakout rooms.

Approximately 20 participants divided into two breakout rooms, each with a MASS facilitator and at least two FBISD moderators. The facilitators guided participants through a series of visuals via Miro. The participants then selected imagery that would best represent the project’s key priorities. The notes intention is to reflect the full range of opinions captured in the breakout rooms.

Following the breakout room, participants returned to the main group for a brief report out and DNA testing and genealogy updates provided by Principal Research Group.

 

Discussion in the breakout rooms were facilitated by the following Four Key Priorities:

1. Reveals history and tells the whole truth to convey a complete narrative of Sugar Land and Fort Bend’s role in convict leasing and current national inequalities
2. Uplifts justice and healing becoming a model for how we strengthen and honor not only the Sugar Land 95, but also other victims across the country
3. Evokes empathy through a shared and thoughtful journey
4. Transforms Education in order to foster intergenerational learning and engagement

 

 

Reveals history and tells the whole truth to convey a complete narrative of Sugar Land and

Fort Bend’s role in convict leasing and current national inequalities

• Participants noted green space that supported community activities, group gatherings, knowledge sharing and listening were desirable for this priority
• Choices also illuminated oral history and spaces that catered to intergenerational learning were also desired
• Spaces for individual reflection after learning was a key element that participants spoken to and they tended to select more subdued spaces that felt more quiet or somber
• Other responses that participants gave connected selected imagery to traditions of African history including the mention of griot gardens and libation ceremonies
• Participants also voiced that Information signage and graphics that could also help tell the story as well as audio and other forms of communication were desirable to connect the whole history into a learning experience

 

Uplifts justice and healing becoming a model for how we strengthen and honor not only the

Sugar Land 95, but also other victims across the country

• The need to have individual markers for each of the Sugar Land 95 was voiced strongly with this

key priority

• Participants noted that using individuals through plantings or individual markers to honor and connect these individuals to visitors would demonstrate a form of healing
• Participants were also interested in symbolic sculpture elements that embodied multiple meanings in its form
• Images that also demonstrated growth through plant materials demonstrated healing to the audience and more natural and softer forms were desirable over formal landscapes
• Participants noted that art could be used as a community collaborative activity and/or powerful visual to display healing and justice SL95 Engagement

 

Evokes empathy through a shared and thoughtful journey

• Images that evoked a more solemn tone and landscape that spoke to the harsh that the Sugar Land 95 faced were selected
• Spaces that gave participants a more quiet space for reflection and seating
• Generational sharing of stories and connection

 

Transforms education in order to foster intergenerational learning and engagement

• Immersion in the landscape that demonstrates historical information and interpretation that allows for younger students to learn and engage directly with that history
• Community celebrated spaces that allow for groups to gather and learn together
• “Places and events for younger generations to learn from people with the knowledge and experiences are important”
• Visual learning throughout the site