Slavery's ghost haunts factory's renovation into upscale apartments
PRATTVILLE, Ala. — There’s no painless way to explain the history of a massive brick structure being renovated into apartments in Prattville, Ala. — a factory that played a key role in the expansion of slavery before the Civil War.
Dating back to the 1830s, the labor of enslaved Black people helped make it the world’s largest manufacturer of cotton gins, an innovation that boosted demand for many more enslaved people to pick cotton that could be quickly processed in much higher quantities than ever before, historians say.
The project to transform the factory's five historic buildings into 127 upscale homes has many in the city of nearly 40,000 excited that a local landmark will be saved from demolition. New residents moving in early next year will only help Main Street's shops and restaurants.
But the multi-million-dollar project also demonstrates the difficulty of telling the complicated story of a place in a way that both honors the past and doesn't raise hackles over "wokeness" in a deeply conservative community.
Prattville’s namesake, Daniel Pratt, became Alabama’s first major industrialist, starting a business to produce gins. He designed his company town with a physical layout matching an ethos built on labor, education and faith, he had workers build a church, schools and stores near the factory.
Slavery was always part of the operation, according to “Daniel Pratt of Prattville: A Northern Industrialist and a Southern Town,” by Curt John Evans.
Pratt used four enslaved mechanics in 1837 as collateral for a $2,000 bank loan to buy 2,000 acres for what would become Prattville, and then used more slave labor to clear the swampy land, according to the book.
In the 1850s, Pratt purchased skilled slaves to do the vital work whites wouldn’t do. By 1860, he owned 107 enslaved people.
Prattville’s current mayor, Bill Gillespie Jr., is among those who believe the story of the factory needs to be told, even if it's tricky politically.
The project's developers at Envolve Communities LLC intend to display some historic documents, photos and perhaps furnishings from the factory's past, but it's unclear whether they'll address slavery or race, said Ashley Stoddart, community manager for The Mill at Prattville.
Stoddart said the focus so far has been on saving the structure, which closed for good in 2012 after the last owner outsourced the work to India.
Deborah Robinson's husband Robert Lee Robinson, who is Black and once worked in the factory, hopes residents will have a chance to learn about more than the man who founded the town and owned the slaves who worked there.
“They always talk about Daniel Pratt and what he accomplished, but how did he accomplish that? Whose back did he accomplish that on? Whose shoulders was he standing on?” said Robinson.
