Amid debates about memorials, advocates push to remember Atlanta’s forced laborers

The entrance to the former site of the Chattahoochee Brick Company, located on the western edge of Atlanta at the confluence of Proctor Creek and the Chattahoochee River, is shown.

BITA HONARVAR / Special to wabe

After the Civil War, Atlanta and much of the South needed to be rebuilt.

One of the places that helped make that happen was the Chattahoochee Brick Co., which produced millions of bricks at its location on the Chattahoochee River in northwest Atlanta. Atlanta homes are built of those bricks, and Atlanta’s roads are paved with them. James English, an Atlanta mayor who had also been a captain in the Confederate Army, owned the factory.

And Chattahoochee Brick – like other factories, farms and mines around the South – used convict labor.