Formerly enslaved Black men helped build one of St. Louis’s great industrial enterprises. Yet the history of Hydraulic Press Brick is more often told through its machinery, its staggering production, and the “brick barons” who profited from its success. The people who made, carried, and laid those bricks left a legacy of their own, one that reveals both the opportunities emancipation created and the unequal power that shaped Black labor in the decades after the Civil War.

Join us on Thursday, August 20 for the next Unseen STL History Talk with Drew Quon. Doors open at 6:30 p.m., the talk begins at 7 p.m., and the cover is $5.