Lincoln High School

Lincoln High's first years were contested. The school stood in South Dallas, and in late 1940 officials staggered its day by thirty minutes from the nearby white Forest Avenue High School, citing segregation and clashes the Dallas Morning News called overestimated. In 1941 the segregationist South Dallas Civic League threatened to block its reopening, bombings occurred nearby, and white residents sought injunctions to turn the building into a white school. In 1942 teacher Thelma Page and the Negro Teachers Alliance sued over a $540 pay gap, and the board agreed to equalize salaries within two years.

What the plaque says

Lincoln High School In 1937, the Dallas school board appointed a building committee to find land for a new high school for African Americans. The committee chose eleven acres at this location. Lincoln High School was one of the largest campuses in the city, with twenty classrooms, chemistry and physics laboratories, auditorium, cafeteria, and library in the main building. A federal Public Works Administration grant paid for nearly half of the construction cost. In January 1939, Lincoln High School opened its doors for the first time with 1,255 students and 31 teachers. Because of extreme overcrowding, many of these students had come from the only previous school for Blacks, Booker T. Washington (5 MI. N). Tueria Dell Marshall (1883-1960), the first principal at the new school, served for 16 years and saw the enrollment surge to more than 3,000. Marshall, credited with bringing his students quality academic training, is buried in the historic L. Butler Nelson Cemetery adjacent to his beloved school. Attendance at Lincoln declined during an incremental desegregation plan from 1960 to 1971, and new schools also trimmed enrollment. Lincoln has many distinguished graduates, counting more than 200 educators among its alumni. Dallas architect Walter C. Sharp, responsible for several schools in Arlington, Dallas and Tyler, designed Lincoln High School, and Dolph-Bateson Construction Company served as contractor. Sharp's Moderne architecture design, with window repitition and a cantilevered entry canopy emphasized the horizontal direction. The vertical massing and tower with glass bricks at the entrance made the building a landmark in the neighborhood. (2006)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• African American Museum, Dallas — 1.9 mi
  Founded in 1974 at Bishop College, a free Fair Park museum holding the Sepia photograph archive, African art and A. Maceo Smith's papers, and the story of the Hall of Negro Life.
• Fair Park — 1.9 mi
  The State Fair of Texas grounds since 1886, where the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition left one of the country's greatest concentrations of Art Deco exposition buildings.
• Dallas Heritage Village at Old City Park — 2.5 mi
  Dallas's first city park, laid out around Browder's Spring in 1876, now a museum of historic buildings moved here from across North Texas, among them Millermore, a cotton planter's mansion.
• Dallas Museum of Art — 3.7 mi
  A city art museum that began as the Dallas Art Association in 1903, grew up in Fair Park, and has stood in the Arts District since 1984 under a forty-foot barrel vault.

More markers nearby

• John C. McCoy — 0.7 mi
• General Richard M. Gano (C.S.A.) — 0.7 mi
• South Boulevard-Park Row Historic District — 1.5 mi
• WRR Radio — 1.5 mi