![]() Throughout the history of segregation, government employees, historians, and sociologists documented differences in the philosophy and physical structures of the white and Black institutions in the state. The institution became “Exhibit A” for the disparities that prevailed in Arkansas during segregation. ![]() Founded in 1923, the Arkansas Negro Boys Industrial School (NBIS) was, for most of its existence, a juvenile work farm located first outside Pine Bluff (Jefferson County) and then, in the mid-1930s, outside of Wrightsville. The event brought attention to this largely forgotten institution that was operating during the Jim Crow era in Arkansas. The wife of one of the survivors later said, in an interview before her husband’s death from cancer, that he had continued to dream about the fire. Survivors never forgot the horror of that fire. Amidst the choking, blinding smoke and heat, four or five boys at a time tried to fight their way forward through the narrow openings as the fire began to devour them. Forty-eight children, ages thirteen to seventeen, managed to claw their way to safety by knocking out two of the window screens. The institution was one mile down a dirt road from the mostly Black town of Wrightsville, then an unincorporated hamlet thirteen miles south of Little Rock (Pulaski County). on a cold, wet morning, following earlier thunderstorms in the same area of rural Pulaski County. The fire mysteriously ignited around 4:00 a.m. On March 5, 1959, twenty-one African American boys burned to death inside a dormitory at an Arkansas reform school in Wrightsville (Pulaski County).
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