Arkansas Negro Boys' Industrial School

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.[4] As of March 1959, the Wrightsville school had 69 boys aged between 14 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."[5] The boys lived in a 1936 Works Progress Administration building described by TIME as "rickety."[6] Governor of Arkansas Orval Faubus (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.[1]^:22–23 A 1956 report by graduate student Gordon D. Morgan found "many boys go for days with only rags for clothes ... More than half of them wear neither socks nor underwear during [the winter] of 1955-56".[7][8]

In the pre-dawn morning of March 5, 1959, a fire was set in the dormitory of the Wrightsville facility.[9] Arthur Ray Poole, aged 16, one of two inmate "sergeants" with minor responsibility, smelled the smoke.[1]^:3[5] Police never investigated to determine who caused the fire, although it was later determined to have been set from outside sources. The doors had been locked into the dormitory, and the windows covered with "heavy gauge wire mesh", making escape nearly impossible.[10][1]^:3 O. F. "Charley" Meadows, a 16-year-old night sergeant, broke open one window, allowing for egress.[1]^:4[6] 48 boys managed to escape, while 21 burned to death.

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. Some family members were skeptical of the account the officials gave of the burial. On the 50th anniversary of the fire, the families held a press conference at the Arkansas Capitol.[10]

Segregationist Governor of Arkansas Orval Faubus 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 returned no indictments, but stated:

The blame can be placed on lots of shoulders for the tragedy: the Board of Directors, to a certain extent, who might have pointed out through newspaper and other publicity the extreme hazards and plight of the school; the Superintendent and his staff, who perhaps continued to do the best they could in a resigned fashion when they had nothing to do with [it]; the State Administration, one right after another through the past years, who allowed conditions to become so disreputable; the General Assembly of the State of Arkansas, who should have been so ashamed of conditions that they would have previously allowed sufficient money to have these conditions corrected; and finally on the people of Arkansas, who did nothing about it."[11]

A KTHV report said that "somehow the story faded into the backdrop of the Civil Rights Movement."[9] 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.[11]

The land once occupied by the unit now houses the Arkansas Department of Correction Wrightsville Unit. For sixty years, there was no marker or memorial that indicated that the boys school existed or that the fire occurred.[9] On April 25, 2019, a monument to the dead was unveiled at the Wrightsville Unit of the Arkansas Department of Correction.[12]

Stockley, Grif (28 July 2017). Black boys burning : the 1959 fire at the Arkansas Negro Boys Industrial School (Hardcover ed.). University Press of Mississippi. ISBN 1496812697.

Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture entry