A New Era

The dedication of Phillips Memorial Auditorium on May 30, 1939, may have been the most important event to take place on the Lincoln School campus since the dedication of Livingston Hall. The handsome structure remains to this day a fine memorial to Elizabeth Phillips Thompson, a tireless crusader from 1892 to 1927 for Lincoln School. The Phillips Memorial Auditorium has been given the designation [CA 2/3/90, 88003243] by The National Register of Historic Places. It is included in the book, African American Historic Places, put out by the National Park Service, Department of the Interior, and published by John Wiley and Sons. The cost is $25.95 with the ISBN 0-471-14345-6.

By the 1940s, football and baseball teams had been

dropped at Lincoln (football was revived in the fifties). The basketball team participated in the all-black Alabama State Basketball Tournament at Montgomery in 1942 and for several years later. Lincoln School was the only entry with a white coach in 1942. His name was Cecil Thomas, a beloved instructor of the social sciences as well as basketball coach. Lincoln School defeated a team from Tuscumbia, and lost the second game to Booker T. Washington High School from Montgomery, a swift, sophisticated aggregation that had to work hard to beat Lincoln School. At the National Basketball Tournament, held a few weeks later at Tuskegee, Lincoln was virtually stomped in the first round by a well coached and superior team from Oklahoma. Lincoln School, continued to participate in basketball tournaments for a number of years.

The Lincoln women's basketball team was district champion in 1942. Few high school women's teams in the area were of their equal. The team was coached by science faculty member James Wright from DeLand, Florida.

In 1941, the Lincoln School Little Chorus was organized by the late Olive J. Williams, music teacher at Lincoln School. On April 10, 1942, the Little Chorus embarked on a two week tour of Indiana and Ohio colleges, schools, and churches under the logistical management of Cecil and Francis Thomas. That tour resulted in the development of relationships between Lincoln School and Earlham College, Manchester College and Antioch College for several years. One or more Lincoln School graduates attended those institutions, and most of them graduated, or transferred later to other institutions.

Just prior to the whirlwind tour of two weeks, the Little Chorus was invited to sing at Judson College. As a way of showing feelings about integration and protesting segregation at the same time, the fourteen member mixed-racial staff at Lincoln sat proudly in the front row of the auditorium in checkerboard fashion - black, white, and black and white. That seating arrangement was probably a first for "the Judson" as it was often called by local people. The Little Chorus also performed at the Perry County Courthouse.

Public contributions from the state came to be of such dimensions in 1943 that it compelled the AMA to withdraw all white teachers. Lincoln eventually became like all other schools in the state - all white or all black.