Grif Stockley

The well-researched book covers a period in the late 1950s where Black people in the South were terrorized by racist, terrorist acts including the death of twenty-one Negro boys at Arkansas Negro Boys School, a reform school in Little Rock, Arkansas. The fire broke out in the middle of the night while the boys were left with no adult supervision, and were trapped in the building. The story continues with the cover up of the incident, and other related incidents that led to the death of Negro children. It is a sad, shameful story, and you can't help reading it without becoming angry and sickened by the history of these events.… (mehr)

'Black Boys Burning' is the horrifying true story of a deadly fire in an all-black prison farm. Twenty-one young lives lost needlessly. The simple explanation? They were locked into the building at night with no adult present for protection or emergency, in a building that had long been identified by government officials at all levels to be in dire need of repair. What the story really does is present to us the realities faced by blacks throughout the Jim Crow south and the lengths to which white leaders and lawmakers were willing to go to cover up the truth. That if they had taken measures to care for those children as they would their own, they need never have died. This novel holds a candle up in the memory of these children and Stockley's research is thoroughly and painstakingly dedicated to revealing the long road leading up to that terrible night in 1959 and the aftermath. Well written and moving.… (mehr)

On March 5, 1959, a fire broke out at the Arkansas Negro Boys Industrial School in Wrightsville outside of Little Rock. The doors were locked. Although there was supposed to be an adult on site with the key, for some reason, that night there was no one. Some, mostly older boys, managed to force their way out through the windows but many were not able to, whether because they were too panicked to see the way out or because the smoke was so heavy that it blocked their way. There were 69 boys at the school at the time between the ages of 13 and 17, 48 of whom managed to get out. Twenty-one did not. When the fire was finally put out, their bodies were discovered, most so badly burned that even their parents couldn’t recognize them.

In Black Boys Burning: The 1959 Fire at the Arkansas Negro Boys Industrial School, author Grif Stockley gives a well-written and well-documented account of this tragedy. Through the use of contemporaneous documents and news reports as well as interviews with living relatives of the people involved, he provides a stark portrait of the Jim Crow south and the roles that white supremacy and systemic poverty played in it.

Stockley makes it clear that this tragedy was both inevitable and preventable. Despite warnings about the dangers of housing the children in a dilapidated wooden building with faulty wiring, the Board of Directors did nothing. Any monies allotted to improvements went to the school for white boys. Although the fire was investigated and a Grand Jury convened, eventually no one was found culpable. The families received little compensation.

Black Boys Burning is a relatively short book and a very well-written one. Despite this, given the subject matter, it was not an easy read. We have all heard the saying ‘those who choose to ignore history are doomed to repeat it’. This may seem like a cliché but that doesn’t make it any less true. As white supremacy seems to be once more on the rise accompanied by a steady stream of pseudo-and revisionist history, knowing this real history, no matter how uncomfortable it might make us, is more important than ever

Thanks to Netgalley and University Press of Mississippi for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review… (mehr)