(narrator) Founded in 1871 and fed by intersecting railway lines, Birmingham was poised to exploit Alabama's rich underground deposits of coal, limestone, and iron ore: the ingredients of steel. This was the new industrial South, envisioned just prior to the Civil War by slaveholder John T. Milner. (Douglas A. Blackmon) John T. Milner was a brilliant engineer, extraordinary businessman; he was also a supreme racist and a despotic person. (man) Negro labor can be made exceedingly profitable in manufacturing iron and in rolling mills, provided there is an overseer, a Southern man who knows how to manage Negroes. (Douglas A. Blackmon) He laid out some of the first railroad lines that would run across Alabama. In many respects, he was the Father of Southern Industrialization, particularly in the deep, deep South. (narrator) Milner's vision triggered decades of rapid industrial growth. After emancipation, industrialists replaced slaves with convicts, acquiring thousands from state and county governments (Mary Ellen Curtin) You can't drive free labor the same way that you can force prisoners to mine five tons of coal a day. And this is why people like Milner wanted prisoners in his coal mines. He saw them as a great source of profit, and he didn't have to worry about labor disputes.