Former Jail Complex That Held the Enslaved

A Civil War-era photograph shows a Black woman with a basket in front of a building that is believed to be part of the former complex at 1315 Duke Street in Alexandria where the slave traders Franklin and Armfield conducted business. Federal soldiers stand behind the barred doorway and peer out upon the woman, who perhaps had been enslaved. Franklin and Armfield, like other slave traders in the Upper South, held Blacks in "slave pens" or "jails" until the enslaved were shipped or marched farther south, where they would be sold.