Locked In

The Arkansas Negro Boys' Industrial School, ten miles southeast of Little Rock, had 69 inmates, aged 14 to 17, living in a rickety 1936 WPA building. Most were sentenced to work on the reform farm for petty offenses such as stealing hubcaps, a few were allowed to stay simply because of broken homes and nowhere else to go. Each night at seven o'clock, they were locked inside their old dormitory by one of three key-carrying Negro officials. Thus they were confined one night last week, when fire broke out; the building was enveloped in flames before anybody could reach the padlocks.

Inside the tinderbox building one boy woke as the flames rolled across the fiberboard ceiling, and cried out the alarm. Flinging themselves against the windows, some of the youngsters slashed their heads and arms on broken glass, tore frantically at the "escape-proof" steel mesh between them and safety. While others pushed at him in terror, Charley Meadows, 16-year-old night sergeant for the inmates, at last broke through one window guard, and another gave way to the boys' desperate strength. Through the two openings, 48 escaped. By the time the fire trucks arrived, the building had caved in, and in its flaming ruins lay the bodies of 21 boys. It was the biggest casualty list in Little Rock fire records.