The Chattahoochee Brick Company was a brickworks located on the banks of the Chattahoochee River in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. The brickworks, founded by Atlanta mayor James W. English in 1878, is notable for its extensive use of convict lease labor, wherein hundreds of African American convicts worked in conditions similar to those experienced during antebellum slavery. It is speculated that some workers who died at the brickworks were buried on its grounds. The brickworks was discussed in Douglas A. Blackmon's Pulitzer Prize-winning book Slavery by Another Name , released in 2008. The property ceased to be an active brickworks in 2011.
The brickworks company was founded in 1878 [1] and located on the east bank of the Chattahoochee River in northwest Atlanta. [2] From the company's founding, it employed convicts via the convict lease system. [1] By 1886, James W. English would become the company's majority shareholder. Following this, English restructured another company he owned, Penitentiary Company No. 3, and was able to re-lease the convicts leased to that company to the Chattahoochee Brick Company. [2] That same year, the Bureau of Labor issued a report that the brickmaking industry in Georgia, which had previously employed "about 600 hands", had been greatly impacted by convict leasing, with 30% of the state's brick production relying on convict leasing and many brickmakers saying they had to use the system to stay competitive with Chattahoochee Brick Company. [3] By the 1890s, Chattahoochee Brick Company managed over 1,200 leased convicts, [2] with about 150 working at the brickworks and the rest leased to other companies throughout the state. [1] At the peak of the company's production, the site averaged about 175 workers per month, [4] with an output of about 200,000 bricks per day. [3] According to writer and journalist Douglas A. Blackmon, hundreds of millions of bricks produced at the brickworks are still in use in structures today. [5]
In 1908, the government of Georgia outlawed the convict lease system, [5] with the official end to the system occurring on March 31 of the next year. [6] While company officials were initially concerned that the company would shut down due to the increased cost of labor, the plant continued producing bricks. [7] However, the year after the convict lease system ended, the company reported a near-50% drop in annual brick production, with a significant increase in production costs as well. [8] The Chattahoochee Brick Company would continue to operate at this site until the 1970s or 1980s, [note 1] when it closed and another brickworks company began to operate at the site. [5] In 2011, the site was razed. [9] [10]
In 2008, Blackmon released the book Slavery by Another Name , which discussed the convict lease system in the Southern United States and talked about the Chattahoochee Brick Company in this regard. [9] The book was later adapted to a PBS documentary of the same name. [10] [11] Speaking of the site, Blackmon stated "This is not just a factory where people were treated badly. It’s a place where people were worked to death and buried in unmarked graves." [5] Both Blackmon and others speculate that workers who died working at the brickworks were probably buried on the site. [10] [5] The site was described in a 2018 article in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution as "the Black Auschwitz of Georgia." [12]
Following the brickworks closing in 2011, the nonprofit group The Trust for Public Land attempted to buy the land and convert it to a public park, but this did not come to fruition. [13] [10] In 2016, South Carolina-based Lincoln Energy Solutions attempted to buy the property and build a shipping facility, though this generated controversy among preservationists. [10] In June that year, the company purchased 45 of the 75 acres of the site. [9] Currently, the nonprofit group Groundwork Atlanta and a broad coalition of community organizations are seeking to build a public park and memorial on the property. [5] [9] [10]
In 2021, Norfolk Southern began working on the property, with the intent to build a refueling station on the land. This generated outcry from preservationists and environmental activists, [14] and in February of that year, they announced they were abandoning plans to build a rail terminal there. [15] [16]
A chain gang or road gang is a group of prisoners chained together to perform menial or physically challenging work as a form of punishment. Such punishment might include repairing buildings, building roads, or clearing land. The system was notably used in the convict era of Australia and in the Southern United States. By 1955 it had largely been phased out in the U.S., with Georgia among the last states to abandon the practice. North Carolina continued to use chain gangs into the 1970s. Chain gangs were reintroduced by a few states during the "get tough on crime" 1990s: In 1995, Alabama was the first state to revive them. The experiment ended after about one year in all states except Arizona, where in Maricopa County inmates can still volunteer for a chain gang to earn credit toward a high school diploma or avoid disciplinary lockdowns for rule infractions.
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Joseph Emerson Brown, often referred to as Joe Brown, was an American attorney and politician, serving as the 42nd Governor of Georgia from 1857 to 1865, the only governor to serve four terms. He also served as a United States Senator from that state from 1880 to 1891.
Braxton Bragg Comer was an American politician who served as the 33rd governor of Alabama from 1907 to 1911, and a United States senator in 1920. As governor, he achieved railroad reform, lowering business rates in Alabama to make them more competitive with other states. He increased funding for the public school system, resulting in more rural schools and high schools in each county for white students and a rise in the state's literacy rate.
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WABE – branded 90.1 FM WABE – is a non-commercial educational FM radio station licensed to Atlanta, Georgia, and serving the Atlanta metropolitan area. The market's National Public Radio (NPR) member station, WABE carries a general public radio schedule with local hosts Lois Reitzes, Rose Scott and H. Johnson and produces the Peabody Award-winning podcast Buried Truths with Hank Klibanoff.
James Warren English was an American politician, bank president, and a staff officer during the American Civil War. He was a reconstruction Era mayor of Atlanta, Georgia, from 1881 until 1883.
Chattahoochee Plantation is an affluent unincorporated community near East Cobb, Georgia, in Cobb County, Georgia, United States.
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Douglas A. Blackmon is an American writer and journalist who won a Pulitzer Prize in 2009 for his book, Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II.
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John Wallace Comer was a businessman, slave owner, mine operator and planter in Alabama during the Reconstruction Era and the early 1900s. The brother of Alabama Governor B. B. Comer, John Wallace Comer operated the Comer family plantation in Barbour County, Alabama. J. W. Comer served from 1863 until 1865 in the 57th Alabama Infantry Regiment during the American Civil War. J. W. Comer also operated the Eureka Iron Works throughout the late 1800s and early 1900s.
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