Chattahoochee Brick Company Descendants Coalition holds Sacred Ceremony

ATLANTA, Ga. (CBS46) - On Saturday, a celebration of the re-envisioning of a massive 75-acre space in Atlanta was held.

The Chattahoochee Brick Company Descendants Coalition in Atlanta hosted the second annual sacred ceremony.

They’re backing a new campaign for this space to honor African American men, women, and children whose lives were sacrificed for the making of 200,000 bricks a day.

Several people turned out, including Mayor Andre Dickens.

We spoke to an author there who wrote a book highlighting prison labor that was used to create a new type of slavery.

“This place, the Chattahoochee Brick Company site on the edge of Atlanta, was one of the most terrible places anywhere in America at the end of the 19th century. There were hundreds of African American men forced to labor here against their will, accused of crimes that many of them had never committed, they suffered terrible abuses and indignities, hunger, whippings...we don’t know how many of them died here or may have been buried here, but this was a place of just grim terror,” said Douglas A. Blackmon, author of “Slavery By Another Name.”

The descendants coalition remains committed to restoring and preserving the Chattahoochee Brick Company site for its sacred historical and educational value.

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