A fellow graduate of P.S. 131

While trying to learn something about a Manhattan tax photo yesterday, I learned something wholly unrelated: Robert Elliott Burns (1892–1955), the author of I Am a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang! , was a graduate of the elementary school I would attend some sixty years later:

[“‘Fugitive’ Author Arrested in Jersey: R. E. Burns, Who Escaped Twice From Chain Gangs, Seized on Request From Georgia.” The New York Times, December 15, 1932.]

Burns, who was coerced into participating in a small-time robbery in Atlanta, escaped from Georgia chain gangs twice. This Times article followed his second escape. The brother mentioned in the excerpt above was Vincent G. Burns (1893–1979), a Congregationalist minister who in 1929 spoke on his brother’s behalf in a bid for clemency after the first escape and recapture. The second escape took place while the bid for clemency was under consideration.

Did our principal know about Burns, his book, and the movie made from it? Did our teachers? Were they keeping quiet, or did they not know about the man who must be the school’s most famous graduate?

I watched I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (dir. Mervyn LeRoy, 1932) in 2022 and described it as “Pre-Code Warner Bros. moviemaking with an emphasis on social justice, exposing the utter brutality of chain-gang life. Ninety years later, it’s still strong stuff.” Paul Muni starred.

An aside: P.S. 131 was built between 1900 and 1901, so the brothers must have begun their schooling elsewhere. Their childhood home was roughly a half-mile from P.S. 131: down 50th Street to Fort Hamilton Parkway, then six blocks over to the school. My brother and I had a much shorter walk to school: our family lived next door.

Related reading
All OCA P.S. 131 posts (Pinboard) : Robert Elliott Burns (Wikipedia) : On the fiftieth anniversary of Burns’s death (Prison Policy Initiative)