A decision to move the remains of hundreds 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.

“I don’t think anybody would want their ancestors exhumed or moved,” said Jeff Bennett, whose great-great-great grandfather was buried at the plantation. “But for them to give us a lot of say so in the new cemetery, down to the design details and the plaques and memorials that we put up, I feel like (they’re) really doing it in a dignified way, in a respectful way.”