Class Is In Session

Between 1936 and 1948, this school’s classroom appeared as it would on an ordinary school day, with the teacher’s desk at the head of the class, students’ benches and tables facing the blackboards, and coats, lunches, and other personal items hung on hooks or kept on shelves at the back of the schoolroom. The school was a self-sufficient structure that met students’ basic needs as well as providing a place for learning. Two outhouses stood just beyond the area now used for parking. The American flag in the room has forty-eight stars because Alaska and Hawaii did not become states until 1959, eleven years after the school closed. Two wood-burning stoves are present; the school first had one stove for heat at the front of the classroom, and a second was obtained during the Great Depression through the Roosevelt administration. The Works Progress Administration also provided a hot lunch at schools to help ensure that all children had one good meal a day.

Parkin, Arkansas · United States