Smoke Signals from Samarcand: The 1931 Reform School Fire and Its Aftermath

In 1931 sixteen poor, white girls—all teenaged inmates at Samarcand Manor, officially named the State Home and Industrial School for Girls, in Samarcand, North Carolina—were accused of burning down two campus buildings in protest against living conditions. Barbara Bennett offers not only a dramatic retelling of this historic case in Smoke Signals from Samarcand, but also reveals a case study of the …