Normal0falsefalsefalseMicrosoftInternetExplorer4Blocton chronicles the history of a community built on coal. In 1883 two entrepreneurs--Truman Aldrich, a New York engineer, and Cornelius Cadle, a former Union Army officer--created the Cahaba Coal Mining Company and built a railroad eight miles into the wilderness of northern Bibb County to tap thick veins of coal deep underground. There, they built the town of Blocton and beside the town rose a sister suburb, West Blocton. In 1892 the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company took control of the Blocton mines, and fifteen years later US Steel swallowed the Tennessee company. Blocton coal was in high demand during World War I and production continued. By the end of the 1920s, however, a devastating fire, mine closure, and the stock market crash devastated the area. Blocton is more than a history of wealthy men, great deeds, greater crises, and giant corporations. It recounts the hopes and dreams, accomplishments and everyday tragedies of the miners, housewives, store keepers, teachers, and all the people who gave personality and perseverance to the community.

A Pulitzer Prize-winning history of the mistreatment of black Americans. In this 'precise and eloquent work' - as described in its Pulitzer Prize citation - Douglas A. Blackmon brings to light one of the most shameful chapters in American history - an 'Age of Neoslavery' that thrived in the aftermath of the Civil War through the dawn of World War II. Using a vast record of original documents and personal narratives, Blackmon unearths the lost stories of slaves and their descendants who journeyed into freedom after the Emancipation Proclamation and then back into the shadow of involuntary servitude thereafter. By turns moving, sobering and shocking, this unprecedented account reveals these stories, the companies that profited the most from neoslavery, and the insidious legacy of racism that reverberates today.

In the late 1870s, Jefferson County, Alabama, and the town of Elyton (near the future Birmingham) became the focus of a remarkable industrial and mining revolution. Together with the surrounding counties, the area was penetrated by railroads. Surprisingly large deposits of bituminous coal, limestone, and iron ore—the exact ingredients for the manufacture of iron and, later, steel—began to be exploited. Now, with transportation, modern extractive techniques, and capital, the region’s geological riches began yielding enormous profits. A labor force was necessary to maintain and expand the Birmingham area’s industrial boom. Many workers were native Alabamians. There was as well an immigrant ethnic work force, small but important. The native and immigrant laborers became problems for management when workers began affiliating with labor unions and striking for higher wages and better working conditions. In the wake of the management-labor disputes, the industrialists resorted to an artificial work force—convict labor. Alabama’s state and county officials sought to avoid expense and reap profits by leasing prisoners to industry and farms for their labor. This book is about the men who worked involuntarily in the Banner Coal Mine, owned by the Pratt Consolidated Coal Company. And it is about the repercussions and consequences that followed an explosion at the mine in the spring of 1911 that killed 128 convict miners.