Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus spoke in anger after fire claimed 21 lives at a state reform school on March 5, 1959.
"There's absolutely no reason for this to happen the way it did except because of negligence on the part of someone," Faubus fumed.
Mesh covered windows at the Arkansas Negro Boys Industrial School in Wrightsville. The school had no fire alarm system, no telephone - and no adult supervision at nighttime. The inmates lived in squalor.
Bodies of 12 of the victims "were heaped below a window they couldn't open," the United Press reported. "Nine other boys were sprawled in ashes that once was a U-shaped brick veneer dormitory building."
As appalling a sight as it was, there's reason to believe Faubus was trying to shift blame as he had visited the school before the fire.
A 1956 report by sociologist Gordon Morgan documented the school's problems, according the Encyclopedia of Arkansas.
Morgan said: “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….[It is] not uncommon to see youths going for weeks without bathing or changing clothes.”
“All buildings…are in need of extensive repairs, particularly the boys’ living quarters,” Morgan said.
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