Pratt convict cemetery

The Pratt convict cemetery is a former burying ground near Pratt Mines for convicts leased to the Pratt Coal & Coke Company and its successor, the Tennessee Coal, Iron & Railroad Company, who died working at their coal mining and coking operations in the vicinity of Pratt City. It was in use from the early 1880s to around 1914, when TCI stopped leasing convict labor. The unmarked graves occupy an area now overgrown with trees west of Howze-Sanford Park in Central Pratt.

The Pratt Mines were the largest employer of convicts in the Birmingham District. Prisoners were confined to crowded bunkhouses, dubbed the Pratt Mines Prison, when not working. As the state's penitentiary physician, Russell Cunningham operated from Pratt from 1880 to 1884. While there he produced the first statistical reports on the morbidity and mortality of African-American convict laborers working in the state's mines. He instituted medical reforms that helped decrease the mortality rate of convicts from 18% per year to less than 3%. His reports recommended further improvements, including replacing the bunkhouses with a stockaded camp with separate cabins. Some of those recommendations were adopted by TCI beginning in 1888 even as the total number of prisoners at Pratt exceeded 900 men.

References

• "Pratt Coal & Coke Company, Pratt Mines, Convict Cemetery" (n.d.) Historic American Engineering Record No. AL-80-C