Brick made by an enslaved person

Source catalog description

This description refers to material held by Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. Visual details below describe the original material.

A brick, made by an enslaved person, from an unknown architectural structure in Port Royal, Virginia. It is a solid style, sand cast brick. The rectangular brick has heavily worn surfaces and edges. There are losses at all of the edges and corners. Half of the brick is discolored to a dark reddish brown lengthwise down the center of one of the brick’s faces; divided by a black line that runs down the center of the brick. The other half of the brick's face is reddish brown. Both headers have the same discoloration. One stretcher is reddish brown and the other is discolored to dark reddish brown. The Old Slave Mart Museum catalog number, [R661], is handwritten vertically in black ink over a small rectangular patch of white painted in the top left corner of the discolored face.

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