by Wesley Harris
Long before Lincoln High became a memory carried by alumni, it was a place where African American children in Ruston learned, competed, sang, prayed, graduated, and imagined futures segregation tried to limit.
Older residents still speak of the Lincoln High Bears with pride. They remember teachers who expected excellence, classmates who became family, ball games that drew the community together, and a school that stood for far more than its classrooms. Lincoln High produced athletes, teachers, public officials, ministers, business owners, military veterans, and community leaders whose influence reached well beyond the campus.
But the story of black education in Ruston did not begin with Lincoln High School.
Its roots reach back to 1885, when Ruston was barely a year old. The town had formed after the railroad came through in 1884, bringing workers, families, merchants, and new opportunities to a settlement along the tracks. African American families were part of that movement into the new town, and within Ruston’s first years, they began building a school tradition for their children.
Through a series of names, structures, and locations, that history traces the persistence of African American education in Ruston: a tradition begun by citizens, rebuilt after fire, supported by community donations, and remembered generations later.
The first school was established in 1885 by African American citizens in and around Ruston, with help and encouragement from white supporters. A later historical account credits J. H. Mays Sr. with furnishing much of the money in those early years. The school was chartered in 1891, with a stated purpose of providing moral, literary, and industrial education.
The school was a two-story frame building located at the corner of West Line Avenue and the Rock Island railroad tracks, on what is now the southwest corner of the Neighborhood Walmart property. It became known as Ruston Normal Colored High School. The term “normal” referred to teacher training, an important mission at a time when African American schools needed trained educators and when educational opportunities for children were limited by segregation.
Students studied basic academic subjects, but the curriculum also reflected the educational ideas of the period. It included music, domestic science, hat making and fancy needlework for girls, and manual training and agriculture for boys. Students who completed the course of study and passed examinations could receive a diploma.
Segregation did not merely separate students by race. It shaped the length of the school year, the condition of classrooms, the books available to children, and the burden to provide what public systems often denied. Every dollar raised, every classroom repaired, and every term completed represented a community insisting its children deserved more.
Ruston’s early African American school reflected those limits, but it also demonstrated the determination of the community. The 1910–11 catalogue divided the school year of just eight months into three terms: October through December, January through March, and April through May. Even with those limitations, the school became an important educational institution for black children in Ruston and Lincoln Parish.
One historical account points to two reasons for the school’s early success: the leadership of Principal Israel S. Powell and the desire of black citizens for education. Powell served as principal for 15 years before leaving in 1915 to teach at Leland College. Other early principals included Professor Hamilton, G. S. Hawk, S. B. Belton, and Ira A. Lewis.
For about three decades, Ruston Normal Colored High School stood among the few schools in Louisiana offering African American youth training above the elementary grades. Its graduates entered teaching and other forms of community life. Its existence also showed African American citizens in Ruston were willing to organize, support, and sustain education even when the public system did not provide equal facilities.
By 1922, the school building was worn out and in need of replacement. The same year, a fire completely destroyed the aging structure.
The blaze could have ended the school’s progress. Instead, classes continued in churches and fraternal halls while plans moved forward for a new building. The community response shows the institution was more than a building.
The replacement connected Ruston to one of the most significant African American school-building movements in the South: the Rosenwald school program.
Julius Rosenwald, president of Sears, Roebuck and Company, partnered with Booker T. Washington, head of Tuskegee Institute, to improve educational facilities for African American children in the segregated South. The Rosenwald Fund helped build thousands of schools for black children, but the program was not simply a charity project. It depended on local participation and matching support.
The Rosenwald program helped fund construction of about a dozen schools in Lincoln Parish, in communities like China Grove, Hopewell, Liberty Hill, and Zion Hill.
The model required contributions from multiple sources. Local African American communities raised money through donations, fundraisers, labor, materials, and personal sacrifice. Public school boards also had to contribute. In many places, white citizens contributed smaller amounts. The result was a school-building program that combined national philanthropy with local effort.
The cost to build, equip, and operate the Ruston Rosenwald school for its first four years was $20,790. Julius Rosenwald contributed $2,100. The Lincoln Parish School Board provided $14,690. African American citizens donated $3,400. White citizens contributed $600.
The new school was a two-story, four-classroom brick building at the southwest corner of Oakdale Street and Vaughn Avenue. It opened in 1924 with six teachers. By 1928, it had grown to ten teachers. The growth shows demand for black education in Ruston was increasing and the new building quickly became a center of educational activity.
It opened as Washington School, apparently taking its name from the neighborhood, Washington Heights. At some point, the Washington name was dropped, and the school became known as the Ruston Negro School, and later, as Lincoln High School.
The shifting names can make the history difficult to follow, but they also reveal the school’s long journey through private support, public school recognition, Rosenwald-era construction, expansion, desegregation, and later reuse.
The leadership of the school also changed over time. Mrs. Ira A. Lewis is credited with helping develop the institution from a privately supported school into one supported by the parish school system. After her death in October 1936, later principals included J. K. Haynes, J. H. Owens, Eddie Davenport, Aubrey Land, and Alonzo Davis.
In 1950, a 26-room brick veneer structure was completed on a five-acre tract between Arlington and Mayberry Streets. This is the building most former students remember as Lincoln High School.
Lincoln Elementary was built on the site of the old Washington school at Oakdale and Vaughn. In 2017, when it was being used as a Head Start school, the elementary building was completely destroyed by fire.
By 1968, Lincoln High served grades 9 through 12 and had Principal Alonzo Davis, 25 teachers, two lunchroom workers, one maid, one custodian, and approximately 500 students. But its time was coming to an end as integration meant closing and consolidating many Lincoln Parish schools for the 1969-70 school year.
For students who attended Lincoln High before integration, the school was more than a place of instruction. It was the center of school pride, athletics, music, clubs, graduation ceremonies, friendships, and community identity. The Bears represented not only a school mascot but also a shared experience among generations of students who came of age during segregation.
Use of the Lincoln High building continued for special programs, but alumni and families, the memory of the school remained tied to the era when it graduated American students.
At each stage of its existence, the institution reflected the realities of its time. From the corner of West Line Avenue and the Rock Island tracks in 1885 to the brick Rosenwald school on Oakdale in 1922 and the later Lincoln campus, each place represents a chapter in Ruston’s black educational history. Together, they tell a story of persistence, sacrifice, and a community insisting its children deserved more.
