“We felt like we were in hell…”
Built in 1881, Sloss Furnaces was the first of many blast furnaces in Birmingham, Alabama to manufacture pig iron.
The furnaces aided in catalyzing an Industrial Revolution in the postwar south. It was in Alabama, that the iron industry took off, providing the rest of the country with the material necessary to build everything from country bridges to the first skyscrapers.
But this lucrative new economy came at a high cost to the men who toiled to keep the furnace fed. A majority of furnaces workers were formerly enslaved men, willing to take any work away from the fields they were once forced to labor in. With extreme and hazardous working conditions at the best of times, it is no surprise that accidents resulting in injury or death occurred
Today, many believe that echoes of the tragedy experienced by past workers still reverberate through the tunnels and catwalks of this icon of American industry.
