The Arkansas Negro Boys' Industrial School (1927-1968) was a juvenile

correctional facility In criminal justice, particularly in North America, correction, corrections, and correctional, are umbrella terms describing a variety of functions typically carried out by government agencies, and involving the punishment, treatment, and su ...

for black male youth in

Arkansas Arkansas ( ) is a landlocked state in the South Central United States. It is bordered by Missouri to the north, Tennessee and Mississippi to the east, Louisiana to the south, and Texas and Oklahoma to the west. Its name is from the Osage ...

. There were two locations in 1936, one in Jefferson County and one in Wrightsville1936 Pulaski County, Arkansas Highway Map
"

Arkansas State Highway and Transportation Department The Arkansas Department of Transportation (ArDOT), formerly the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department, is a government department in the U.S. state of Arkansas. Its mission is to provide a safe, efficient, aesthetically pleasing and en ...

. Retrieved on September 28, 2011 southeast of

Little Rock ( The "Little Rock") , government_type = Council-manager , leader_title = Mayor , leader_name = Frank Scott Jr. , leader_party = D , leader_title2 = Council , leader_name2 ...

. A fire in 1959 at the children's dormitory killed twenty-one victims.

Prelude

The NBIS mission was to place children – who would otherwise have been sent to adult prisons – on its working cotton farm, and the first superintendent was Dr. Tandy Washington Coggs. As of March 1959, the Wrightsville school had 69 boys aged between 13 and 17. According to "Negro superintendent of the reform school" L. R. Gaines, "most of the boys in the dormitory were in for minor offenses such as hubcap stealing, or because their parents had split and there was no place for them to go." The boys lived in a 1936

Works Progress Administration The Works Progress Administration (WPA; renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to carry out public works projects, i ...

building described by ''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...

'' as "rickety".Arkansas: Locked In
" ''

''. Monday March 16, 1959. Retrieved on March 9, 2011.

Governor of Arkansas A governor is an administrative leader and head of a polity or political region, ranking under the head of state and in some cases, such as governors-general, as the head of state's official representative. Depending on the type of political r ...

Orval Faubus Orval Eugene Faubus ( ; January 7, 1910 – December 14, 1994) was an American politician who served as the 36th Governor of Arkansas from 1955 to 1967, as a member of the Democratic Party. In 1957, he refused to comply with a unanimous ...

(perhaps best known for his role in the Little Rock school segregation fight) visited the school in January 1958, saying "They really need help. They are using some old wood stoves which should be replaced", but Faubus had in fact reduced the budget by $7,100. Graduate student Gordon D. Morgan wrote a report in which he stated, "Many boys go for days with only rags for clothes ... More than half of them wear neither socks nor underwear during he winterof 1955-56".

Fire

In the pre-dawn morning of March 5, 1959, a fire was set in the dormitory of the Wrightsville facility.KTHV Extra: Arkansas' Secret Holocaust
" KTHV. Retrieved on March 9, 2011. Arthur Ray Poole, aged 16, one of two inmate "sergeants" with minor responsibility, smelled the smoke. Police never investigated to determine who or what may have caused the fire, although many claims have been made. The doors had been locked into the dormitory, and the windows covered with "heavy gauge wire mesh", making escape nearly impossible. It is noted that the equivalent school for white children did not have a protocol of locking their doors.Wrightsville Fire 50 Years Later
" Mone't, Ebone'. KTHV. Retrieved on March 9, 2011. O. F. "Charley" Meadows, a 16-year-old night sergeant, helped in breaking open one window, allowing for egress. 48 boys managed to escape, while 21 burned to death.

Aftermath

The families of the deceased said that authorities told them that 14 of the dead boys were wrapped in newspapers and deposited in an unmarked grave. The gravesite is located at Haven of Rest Cemetery in Little Rock, Arkansas. There was nothing to denote that the children buried there until 2018 when a plaque was donated to the site. On the 50th anniversary of the fire, some families of the dead held a press conference at the

Arkansas State Capitol The Arkansas State Capitol, often called the Capitol Building, is the home of the Arkansas General Assembly, and the seat of the Arkansas state government that sits atop Capitol Hill at the eastern end of the Capitol Mall in Little Rock, Arkan ...

Segregationist Racial segregation is the systematic separation of people into racial or other ethnic groups in daily life. Racial segregation can amount to the international crime of apartheid and a crime against humanity under the Statute of the Interna ...

asked a committee to investigate the fire. The committee concluded that the correctional facility, the State of Arkansas, and the local community held responsibility for the incident, but recommended no course of action. A Pulaski County

grand jury A grand jury is a jury—a group of citizens—empowered by law to conduct legal proceedings, investigate potential criminal conduct, and determine whether criminal charges should be brought. A grand jury may subpoena physical evidence or a pe ...

returned no indictments, but stated: A

KTHV KTHV (channel 11) is a television station in Little Rock, Arkansas, United States, affiliated with CBS. The station is owned by Tegna Inc., and maintains studios on South Izard Street in downtown Little Rock and a transmitter atop Shinall Mountai ...

report said that "somehow the story faded into the backdrop of the

Civil Rights Movement The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional Racial segregation in the United States, racial segregation, Racial discrimination ...

." Frank Lawrence, brother of one of the victims, attempted to make a documentary and brought the fire more widespread attention in the early 21st century. The land once occupied by the unit now houses the

Arkansas Department of Correction The Arkansas Department of Corrections (DOC), formerly the Arkansas Department of Correction, is the state law enforcement agency that oversees inmates and operates state prisons within the U.S. state of Arkansas. DOC consists of two divisions, th ...

's Wrightsville Unit. For sixty years, there was no marker or memorial that indicated that the boys school existed or that the fire occurred. On April 25, 2019, a monument to the dead was unveiled at the Wrightsville Unit of the Arkansas Department of Correction.

References

External links

''Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture'' entry
{{coord missing, Arkansas 1927 establishments in Arkansas 1968 disestablishments in Arkansas 1959 fires in the United States 1959 in Arkansas African-American history of Arkansas Buildings and structures in Jefferson County, Arkansas Buildings and structures in Pulaski County, Arkansas Fire disasters involving barricaded escape routes Prisons in Arkansas History of racism in Arkansas African-American segregation in the United States History of civil rights in the United States Juvenile detention centers in the United States

Prelude

Fire

Aftermath

References

Further reading

External links