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The Wrightsville Twenty-One, Remembering the boys lost on this date [1]

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Date: 2023-03-05  

There was a teacher assigned to sleep in the building with the boys, but he had been hospitalized for three weeks and no one was assigned to replace him. The dormitory was locked from the outside, so when a fire broke out during the night, during a storm, the boys, aged 14-17, had to do the best they could. One boy escaped and ran for a key, but by the time he woke the school superintendent and returned, the building was engulfed. Forty-seven boys escaped. Twenty-one boys died in the flames.

March 5, 1959. The dormitory of the Arkansas Negro Boys Industrial School in Wrightsville, Arkansas, a short distance from Little Rock, caught fire from unknown causes. Newspapers blamed a possible electrical short in the basement office. Other newspapers said the fire started in the attic, or perhaps from the wood stoves used for heating.

It was a school for boys convicted of petty crimes like minor theft, or for homeless boys. Conditions were unspeakable even before the tragedy. The toilet facilities meant a bucket in the corner of the dormitory where they slept, with only inches between them and no room for real movement. Gov. Orval Faubus called the fire and resulting deaths “inexcusable” and promised an investigation.

These are the boys who died, not only of fire but also of official negligence:

John Daniel, 16

Roy Edgewood, 15

Cecil Proctor, 17

Joe Charles Crittenden, 16

Charles Thomas, 15

Henry Daniel, 15

Willie Horner, 16

John Alfred George, 15

Carl Thornton, 15

LIndsey Cross, 15

Amos Gyce, 16

Charles White, 15

Johnny Tillison, 16

Frank Barnes, 15

Jessie Carpenter, 16

Edward Tolston, 15

Willie Lee Williams, 15

R. D. Brown, 16

Willie Piggie, 15

Roy Chester Powell, 16

The Arkansas Gazette said in its article that the name “Industrial School” is a euphemism, although it was intended as both a place to keep young offenders behind bars but also to provide training.

There was a mass funeral for most of the boys, where individual coffins were laid out in a row.

Take a minute today to remember.

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