Madison, Arkansas likely seems just a small crossroads to those who travel down Highway 70, and does not even register at all to those on the big interstate to the north. But it is the oldest town in St. Francis County, much older than its western neighbor, Forrest City, and was once the county seat. Located on the St. Francis River, it was important in the days when rivers were the primary means of transportation. Located in a swampy and heavily wooded area at that time, it was also the location of a sawmill for the large trees that were being cut down as the land was being cleared and drained for agriculture.
Although its street grid has not changed, Madison has few old buildings of much historic interest. There apparently was never a courthouse there, despite being the county seat, and legend says that when Forrest City won the honor, the county records were snuck out of town during the night. But a few things along the main street, now called Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, stood out to me, including a Prince Hall Masonic building, an Islamic Center (which kind of surprised me in such a small and rural place), and a large park dedicated to Dr. King at the far western end of the street bearing his name. Although there had once been juke joints and cafes in Madison, they are all long gone today.
Madison was not always an all-Black town as it is today, but it was always an important town for Blacks in Eastern Arkansas, not the least because of Scott Bond, a former slave who rose not just to freedom or independence but absolute wealth, eventually owning a plantation of his own. Bond owned a number of businesses, but probably the best-known of them was Bondol Laboratories, a chemical company which produced fluids for use in the embalming and funeral home business. One of Scott Bond’s sons, named Ulysses Simpson Bond, owned a motel and restaurant for Black visitors to the area in Madison.
Until the civil rights era, there was no great deal of racial tension in Madison, but that changed as white residents in the area realized that Blacks had the numbers to take over the town politically. When a Black man, Willard Whitaker, was elected mayor of Madison in 1970, the small town was subjected to Klan harassment, including bombings, shots fired into houses, and finally a dramatic shoot-out between the town’s new police force and its former police chief, who was a Klan member.
Bondol Laboratories is gone now, merged with a company in the Northeast, and there is no trace of the U.S. Bond Motel. The saddest thing I noticed while visiting Madison was a large stand of trees and jungle which I suddenly realized was hiding an abandoned building. As in so many other small towns in Arkansas, the ruins proved to be a school. Butler Elementary School was the school for Black children in Madison during segregation. Now abandoned, it is almost completely hidden from the street, except for a brick chimney sticking above the vegetation on the roof. The doors are missing, windows shattered, floors stained with water puddles, and the building is with flies and mosquitoes. It is likely too far gone to be salvaged.
Between Madison and Forrest City sits a Black residential area known as Crow Creek Village, and there I came upon another sad relic, the ruins of Spring Creek Missionary Baptist Church, with its iconic purple doors. Although wide open to enter, the roof is collapsing, making the building extremely hazardous. Hymn books were still in the pews, and posters still on the walls. The pastor’s pulpit was still in place just as he left it for the last time. I got back into my car and drove westward into Forrest City in a depressed frame of mind.