Forced Labor Memorial at Bellwood Quarry

Convict leasing was a practice that government leaders and private businesses used after Emancipation to re-enslave black men, women, continuing a form of  bondage for generations after the Civil War ended.

At the end of the Civil War, the Southern economy was in shambles. Cities that thrived by producing and transporting goods to serve the slave economy struggled to reinvent themselves

Though the 13th Amendment promised to end the practice of relegating human beings to the status of property, it made an exception by allowing involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime.

Government leaders and private businesses colluded to re-enslave black men, women, and even children by falsely convicting them of crimes and sentencing them to labor. This practice became an industry unto itself with prison labor camps and convict-leasing programs reinstating bondage for generations after the war ended.

The businesses at Bellwood Quarry and the Chattahoochee Brick Company in Atlanta relied on this abusive practice. At both sites, African American prisoners labored under conditions documented as “horrific,” with starvation and sleep deprivation. Physical abuse and death were common.

Bellwood Quarry is now the centerpiece of major infrastructure projects in and around Westside Park, which connects to the Beltline’s Westside Trail.  Neighborhoods adjacent to the Beltline corridor are predominantly Black and lower-income, and experiencing “high pressure for gentrification” in a city that persistently ranks among the most inequitable in the United States.

The Truth and Transformation Initiative is organizing an equity-focused, multi-stakeholder engagement effort to build a memorial about convict leasing at Atlanta’s newest and largest public green space, Westside Reservoir Park. Our goal is to create a collaboration across sectors that demands equity and mutual respect to create transformation. We will emphasize power-sharing and peership in this process.

Sharing the truth about history has the power to influence community attitudes, discourse, and policy choices.

No one person or organization can shape a process of truth and transformation for an entire community. A defining part of the Truth and Transformation initiative is to bring diverse stakeholders together as peers, sharing both authority and accountability. This collaboration includes nonprofit organizations, educational systems, government entities, corporations, foundations, grassroots leaders, and universities.

In addition to constructing a memorial at Bellwood Quarry, this project envisions several goals:

• Build a diverse collaboration of partnerships to guide the project and work together to repair legacies of racial violence, intimidation, and marginalization.
• Model strategies for sharing “difficult history” truthfully and empathetically in community conversations and in sessions for educators.
• Document the process of building racial equity using a multi-stakeholder model that can be replicated.
• Develop resources on convict leasing, and the post-Reconstruction era more generally for a wide range of audiences.
• Create curricular and co-curricular components and teacher resources for Grades 3-12 that will be distributed through The Center’s education department networks and collaborators’
• Host and support public engagements that reflect inclusive perspectives, engage truth-telling and encourage racial justice.
• Plan and implement memorial(s) and or commemoration(s) that feel appropriate and meaningful to all stakeholders.