Chattahoochee Brick Company

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]

• Groundwork Atlanta