57 years after closure, Evansville's Lincoln High School's rich sports history remains

Chad Lindskog
Evansville
Lincoln High School, April 16, 1962.

EVANSVILLE — Eighty-nine years later, the stately school building at the corner of Lincoln Avenue and Governor Street still stands, serving as a haven to educate youth in the inner city.

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 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 Indiana 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.

These remnants of the past on display are proof today of Lincoln's excellence through 34 years of slow progress toward integration, which ultimately spurned the closing of the high school in June 1962.

Boys and girls have continued to walk past the same brass plaque George Flowers, 80, and Harold Jackson, 85, admired as boys after Lincoln won a national boys’ basketball championship, the city’s lone. 

Lincoln High School basketball team, mid-1940s. The coach, Thomas Cheeks, whose Lions had always been a powerhouse in the state, regional, and and national competition among black high schools, is standing on the far left.

Sports were a rallying point during a time when blacks couldn’t frequent all the same restaurants and shops as whites. Lincoln students learned not just to stand tall on the court, but to stand tall at all times.

“The spirit of the school and the community ... we were close-knit people,” said Flowers, a ’56 graduate who became the city’s fire chief. “It was happy; it wasn’t like I was depressed about it. That’s just the way things were. Did I want more? Sure, I did. Did I want to be treated as equal? Yes.

“It was just a time of segregation. Even when we went Downtown, you could only sit at a certain place for blacks. Even at the Greyhound bus station.”

Success on the hardwood

Standing tall wasn’t always easy when segregation and prejudice were rampant. Lincoln was forbidden to compete against white teams in contact sports like basketball and football until 1943, when the Indiana Legislature forced the IHSAA to open its membership to all schools.

Even then, it took until 1949 for local Catholic schools Rex Mundi, Mater Dei and Memorial to schedule the Lions. The public schools didn’t budge. Although state law opened all schools to African-Americans in ‘49, black students remained at Lincoln because they lived nearby. A few integrated into Bosse and Central in the early 50s, but they were the exception.

“In the 50s, being a black kid, you didn’t have too many things to look forward to around this city,” said 81-year-old James Harris, another ’56 graduate who played basketball for the Lions.

Fans celebrate as Evansville Lincoln, in its waning days as the city's all-black high school, upset Bosse 42-37 in the Evansville Sectional at Roberts Stadium on Feb. 27, 1958.

Harris' senior year marked Lincoln becoming the city’s first team to finish a regular season undefeated. They also won the school’s first sectional championship. That was the same season Oscar Robertson led Attucks to back-to-back state titles. Lincoln repeated the next year and won a regional, too, before claiming another sectional in ‘60. Those high-powered Lions’ teams often scored 100 points per game.

Segregation meant Lincoln had to travel. Few teams ventured as far.

“It was a great experience for our kids,” said Flowers, who didn't play basketball for Lincoln but was a part of the track team. “That’s the one time segregation was kind of a fun thing, because it allowed our young men to go to bigger cities.”

The Lions traveled by bus to play teams from St. Louis, Nashville, Dayton, Gary, Indianapolis, Louisville and Missouri. Area opponents included Henderson, Owensboro, Princeton, Hopkinsville, Madisonville and Carbondale.

“It was a little inconvenient for us,” Jackson, a former student manager, said with a chuckle.

National champs and NBA lore

Before the Lions were allowed to play IHSAA foes, Lincoln went 22-1 in 1940 and won the 28-team Southern Interscholastic Basketball Tournament title. The tournament was held in Tuskegee, Alabama for black schools, and the Lions won five games in three days.

Jackson was in second grade and remembers seeing the team ride atop a fire truck during a parade city officials held when the team returned to Evansville. Flowers cherished what the school’s accomplishments meant.

“That was something we were really proud of,” Flowers said. “Lincoln always had a good history of having good athletes. It was a shame we couldn’t share that.”

The Lions didn’t embody what we traditionally associate with hoops in the Hoosier state. They didn’t grow up playing in barns or cramped gyms, but rather they represented a different type of underdog, one that’s black and from the inner-city.

Pacers players doused teammate John Barnhill with champagne after they won the ABA championship on May 20, 1972, defeating the New York Nets 108-105. At right is Pacer Roger Brown, who starred in the game.

Former Lincoln class president John Barnhill (’55) played collegiately at Tennessee State and won NAIA championships in ‘57, ‘58 and ’59. He was chosen in the 11th round of the ’59 NBA Draft and spent 10 seasons with St. Louis, Detroit and Baltimore. He later played in the rival ABA for the Indiana Pacers. In the 70s, after his playing days finished, he was the Los Angeles Lakers’ Director of Player of Personnel.

Harris, his classmate at Lincoln, admired Barnhill, who died in 2013.

“Most young guys figured basketball was something if you could play and if you were good, you’d get recognition from your peers,” he said. “Except, most everybody wanted to beat us because they didn’t want us to be up there.”

Thanksgiving football, an LHS tradition

Lincoln isn’t solely rich in basketball history.

Every year, at 10 a.m. on Thanksgiving Day at the old football stadium behind the school – the one surrounded by a brick wall standing 6 1/2 feet tall – more than 2,000 people flocked to watch Lincoln take the gridiron. The Lions almost exclusively played out-of-state teams outside of a four-year stretch when they faced Mater Dei in the annual event.

“That was a big time for Lincoln,” Flowers said. “Thanksgiving Day was held as one of the great traditions there. It brought the community together.”

The Evansville Courier sports page from the morning after Lincoln's Thanksgiving Day win over Mater Dei in 1949.

The local Lions Club, which was made up of all-white gentlemen, loved to watch Lincoln play football, Flowers said, and was a constant in attendance. Generally, people throughout the community went to games because it was quality competition.

“I remember going to many of those,” Jackson said. “I just have a lot of fond memories at Lincoln.”

Quarterback Calvin Martin (’45) played at Maryland State in college and was a backup for the Detroit Lions before finishing in the Canadian Football League. His teammate William Saucer (’46) became the first black football player at Evansville College.

Lincoln only played 35 of its 296 football games against city competition.

Student life in the segregated era

Dawn Whitticker didn’t attend Lincoln High School. To her chagrin at the time, her mother, a teacher at Lincoln, wanted her to go elsewhere because other schools had better resources.

Yet, because she lived nearby and most of her friends continue to attend Lincoln, she remained part of the community. Her father played football for the Lions. Her two grandsons attend the school today.

“The teachers were excellent. They were really strong disciplinarians,” she said. “Even if you were a student who wasn’t as up to speed, they made sure you learned.”

Lincoln was built in 1928 and closed as a high school in 1962. It now functions as Lincoln Elementary school.

There were no laws against corporal punishment, Flowers was sure to remind. If a teacher wanted to paddle a student for acting up, they did it. If a student spoke out of turn in class, they’d better be quick to duck because a chalkboard eraser would be speeding toward their head.

Teachers cared. Their roles extended to after-school care.

“The thing was if you messed up at school, the teacher knew your mother,” Flowers said. “We were all forced to stay together, even during our entertainment. My teacher would probably see my mother in the grocery store and the beauty shop.”

You behaved when you were in school because teachers lived in the same neighborhood and were able to get to the bottom it — literally speaking. Everyone shared a sense of pride for their community. They were in it together.

“I certainly liked when school became integrated,” said Whitticker, who left Lincoln in sixth grade, “but I also liked it being segregated. Being an African-American, I wouldn’t take the experience back. “

Leaving a legacy

The school’s alumni association will host another reunion next summer for former students who will return with their families from across the city, country and even some abroad.

Lincoln is proud of its past and excited about a promising future. Those who have been around long enough to witness society take steps to accept everyone as equals indubitably have hundreds of more stories to share about the past, perhaps some not as suitable for the newspaper.

“Students like myself who are now senior citizens now, we’re proud to sit around and talk about the good old days at Lincoln and the legacy it had,” said Flowers, the alumni association president.

George Flowers, 80, is a 1956 graduate of Lincoln High School, an all-black segregated high school until 1962, in Evansville. He went on to become the city's first African American Fire Chief.

Someday, the former students all will have passed. It’s been nearly 57 years since the final high school class graduated and they’ve made the world a better place. Their memories shall last forever.

Accomplishments in sports, however inconsequential they may seem in comparison to the injustices in everyday life, helped give the city’s black community hope.

“To this day, I love when I pass Lincoln and see it still standing there in its majestic form,” Flowers said.

Contact Courier & Press columnist Chad Lindskog by email, clindskog@gannett.com, or on Twitter: @chadlindskog.