On March 12, 1931, the Samarcand Manor State Industrial Training School for Girls, located twenty miles away from Carthage, North Carolina, was set on fire.
Sixteen suspects between the ages of thirteen and eighteen were charged the following day with arson, at the time a capital crime in the state of North Carolina.
[1] The girls had a taste for fire—one group, in jail in Robeson County, destroyed their cells, tearing up their bunks and setting them afire.
Another, jailed in Carthage, NC, torched their beds and attacked the firefighter who arrived to fight the blaze.
[2] Journalist, death penalty opponent, and newly minted lawyer Nell Battle Lewis agreed to take the case as defense attorney.