The Tragic Story of the Arkansas Negro Boys’ Industrial School
Growing up, I thought the institution was an urban legend. The truth was worse.
History is fascinating. It is a work in progress. It evolves. Many times, the history we think we know is but a fable. But every so often, long-hidden history, not to be ignored, reaches out from the depths of obscurity, extending a hand from the distant past to tap us on the shoulder.
This is the story of one of those times.
My three brothers and I spent part of our childhood years in Little Rock, Arkansas. It was the 1960s. My memories of that time are clear, like living in a one-story, three-bedroom house on Marshall Street in a mostly Black neighborhood filled with children.
Our parents both held full-time jobs, so we spent a good deal of time left to our own devices. We played four-square and hide-and-seek for hours on end. We played baseball and touch football in the middle of Marshall Street without worry. It was a time devoid of video games, free of social media.
Except for Mrs. Pearl, the rotund, elderly White lady who paid me five dollars a week to mow her dangerously sloped yard, my childhood neighborhood was as segregated as my elementary school.
