The Arkansas Negro Boys' Industrial School (1927-1968) was a juvenile correctional facility for black male youth in Arkansas. There were two locations in 1936, one in Jefferson County and one in Wrightsville southeast of Little Rock. 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 building described by Time as "rickety". 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. 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 [the winter] of 1955-56". 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 "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. 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