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 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." The boys lived in a 1936 Works Progress Administration building described by TIME as "rickety." Governor of ArkansasOrval Faubus 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. 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 of 1955-56".
The fire
In the pre-dawn morning of March 5, 1959, a fire was set in the dormitory of the Wrightsville facility. Arthur Ray Poole, aged 16, one of two inmate "seargents" with minor responsibility, smelled the smoke. 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. O. F. "Charley" Meadows, a 16-year-old night sergeant, broke 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. 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. 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 Countygrand jury returned no indictments, but stated: A KTHV report said that "somehow the story faded into the backdrop of the Civil Rights Movement." 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 CorrectionWrightsville 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.
