SUGAR LAND, Texas (AP) - A Houston-area school district will spend $284,000 for the reburial of remains believed to be 95 African American prisoners hired out during the notorious Texas convict-leasing period.

Trustees of the Fort Bend Independent School District on Monday night awarded the reinterment contract to the Missouri City Funeral Directors. The remains were found last year at a school construction site in Sugar Land.

District officials later decided not to build on the property that's believed to be a burial site for inmates contracted out, but not paid, in the decades after the Civil War.

Fort Bend County and school officials in July reached an agreement to establish a permanent resting place for the convict laborers as part of a possible memorial and education center.

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