Editor’s note: The Courier & Press and The Gleaner are marking Black History Month with a collection of stories about people, places and events from local Black history.
EVANSVILLE — The first new school built in Evansville for the Black community, local historians called it.
Lincoln School opened in 1928, the same decade that saw Ku Klux Klan members win the Indiana governor’s office and more than half the seats in the Legislature. Segregation was the law of the land. Lincoln was built to educate Evansville’s Black youth and, because it was the only Black high school in the area, kids from Mount Vernon, Rockport, Newburgh and Grandview were bussed into town to attend Lincoln.
It was one of the state’s three segregated high schools, along with Crispus Attucks in Indianapolis and Roosevelt in Gary. It also lacked many of the advantages the bigger and better-funded white schools in town enjoyed.
Lincoln School today is a public K-8 institution that feeds into Central High. But the trophy case sitting past the lobby and pictures hanging in the hall keep history on display. Lincoln won a national boys’ basketball championship, the city’s lone. The Lincoln Lions were perennially a powerhouse in state, regional and national competition among Black high schools.