A construction project in Alabama demonstrates the difficulty of telling complicated U.S. history in 2022.
A once-abandoned cotton gin factory that is being renovated into apartments stands beside Autauga Creek in Prattville, Ala., on Thursday, Nov. 10, 2022. The factory's history is tied up in slavery, and the project demonstrates the difficulty of telling complicated U.S. history.
Prattville’s namesake, Daniel Pratt, became Alabama’s first major industrialist against this backdrop, moving South from New Hampshire and starting a business to produce gins several years later. Pratt used four enslaved mechanics in 1837 as collateral for a $2,000 bank loan to buy 2,000 acres along Autauga Creek for what would become Prattville, and then used more slave labor to clear the swampy land, according to the book.
Yet only snippets of the story — and nothing about slavery — are mentioned on the new development's website, and the factory's ties to slavery are rarely discussed in the city, which is about 75% white and tends to vote Republican.Some people in Prattville have complained about its name — The Mill at Prattville — saying it was a factory, not a mill. Others contend that turning it into apartments is almost demeaning to its history as the leading maker of cotton gins.Bill Gillespie Jr.
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