Dunbar Garden A Big Success in Little Rock
Thirty years ago, Dunbar Garden (www.DunbarGarden.org) took root in a historic Little Rock, Arkansas, neighborhood. Since then, it has become a successful classroom for teaching its community about gardening and self-sufficient farming.
The community garden spans a little more than 2 acres consisting of vegetables, chickens, bees, fruit trees, a greenhouse, community composting, and a 3.7-kilowatt Skystream wind turbine spinning above it all. The garden is still going strong, even after the COVID-19 pandemic slowed things down for a while, and the community strives to provide educational resources for students and families as a top priority.
Teaching the New Generation
Many locals of Little Rock know that Dunbar Magnet Middle School was opened in 1929 as Paul Laurence Dunbar High School—named after the African American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906). Dunbar High School was built as a Black-only, combined middle and high school during the “separate but equal” era of education brought into effect by the Supreme Court ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) and ended by the ruling in Brown v. Board of Education (1954).
Despite systemic inequality and fewer educational resources than the white only high school, Dunbar became a well-regarded school. In 1955,
