A decision to move the remains of hundreds of African American tenant farmers from a former Virginia tobacco plantation to a dedicated burial ground has elicited a range of emotions among the sharecroppers’ descendants.

Some worry about the implications of disturbing the graves of people who were exploited and enslaved. Others hope the remains can be identified and reburied with more respect than they were afforded in life.

The mostly unidentified remains are being moved from a site that had been part of one of the nation’s largest slave-owning operations, to make way for an industrial park.