ARKANSAS SIGHTSEEING: Black history center of Fargo museum

A sculpture of Floyd Brown is displayed at Fargo Agricultural School Museum.
A sculpture of Floyd Brown is displayed at Fargo Agricultural School Museum.

FARGO — The photographs of Fargo Agricultural School's senior classes from the Jim Crow era are embellished with upbeat slogans of hope.

Visitors to Fargo Agricultural School Museum, a half-dozen miles north of Brinkley, can take heart from the buoyant sentiments of hardscrabble rural teenagers:

"To be, rather than to serve."

"Not finished, just begun."

"The end — there is none."

"The best is yet to come."

The challenges facing the new Black graduates are summed up by one of the messages, framed behind glass: "To the stars, through bolts and bars."

The figurative bolts and bars that rigid racial segregation imposed on Black Arkansans during the school's operation from 1920-1949 lie outside the museum's purview. An impressive number among the many hundreds of alumni went on to successful lives of work and family, including college in a number of cases.

The creator of their school was a visionary Black educator named Floyd Brown. The museum celebrates his zealous work over three decades to provide what the museum's brochure calls "an outstanding academic and vocational curriculum at a time when little public education was available to African Americans in Arkansas. The cost was $15 a month for room, board and tuition, but no one was turned away for lack of payment."

School founder Floyd Brown is shown with eight members of the class of 1937.
School founder Floyd Brown is shown with eight members of the class of 1937.

Born in Mississippi, Brown had studied at Tuskegee Institute under the legendary Booker T. Washington. Although he is said to have come to Brinkley with just $2.85 in his pocket, Brown somehow raised the money to buy the 20-acre campus. He then persuaded local Black citizens to donate labor and supplies to build classrooms, dormitories and barns.

The school was modeled on Tuskegee, as the brochure points out. Brown "motivated young people to study, to work and to improve themselves." He "created a school that impressed students with the dignity of agriculture, the value of community service and hard work, and an essential faith in God and family."

At its peak in the mid-1940s, Fargo had nearly 200 students. They did more than study. According to the brochure, boys "worked on the school farm, producing 90 percent of the food consumed at the school." Girls "learned home-economics crafts such as needlepoint, sewing and food preservation that were essential for rural families at the time."

On display is a treadle sewing machine from the 1930s, before electricity came to most of rural Arkansas. There are also old tools and cooking utensils in the former main building of the school, which closed in 1949 due to Brown's failing health. He sold the property to the state, which turned it into the Fargo Negro Girls Training School. That facility closed after racial integration became the law of the land.

Fargo faculty and students are depicted, as well as promgoers.
Fargo faculty and students are depicted, as well as promgoers.

By the time the state sold the property to Arkansas Land and Farm Development Corporation in the 1980s, the main school building was derelict. The development of the present museum in several of its rooms was a labor of love by alumni still living in the area, as explained by Calvin R. King Sr., president and chief executive officer of the corporation.

"During that period, the alumni would have annual reunions and frequent meetings donating their time to improve the museum and create new displays," King says. "There were so many challenges, and the building was falling in."

There's still a makeshift feel to some exhibits. But the numerous photographs of students, teachers and activities bring to life the school's three decades of operation and its exceptional value to the community it served. In the brochure's words, "In a time when rural Black families had few options for advancement, Floyd Brown taught people to care for themselves and for others. He changed the lives of hundreds of people with the basic philosophy that 'Work will win.'"

Fargo Agricultural School Museum

  • Hours: 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday
  • Admission: Free
  • Getting there: From Little Rock, take I-40 east to exit 216 at Brinkley. Drive north for 3 miles on U.S. 49 and turn right in Fargo at the museum sign onto Floyd Brown Drive. For information, call (501) 734-1140.

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