From Schoolhouse, To Symbol Of Servitude, To Dust

Dan Barry: ATALISSA, Iowa — The old schoolhouse on the hill had announced the farm town of Atalissa to the Iowa flatness for more than a century. But a couple of weeks ago, the prehistoric claw of a John Deere excavator took its first swipe, and soon the building existed only in the landscape of memory.

It was just bricks and mortar in the heartland, and yet also a rare landmark of conflicted emotions. In its final years, the schoolhouse had devolved into a squalid dormitory for dozens of Texas men with intellectual disabilities who spent decades here, eviscerating turkeys for exploitative wages at a nearby plant, enduring abuse, growing old.

The turquoise schoolhouse came to represent the…