Side A: The Black community of Gallipolis pooled their resources and expertise to open Gallipolis Union Colored School in 1868. Located on the northwest corner of Third Avenue and Olive Street, the public school offered primary education until, around 1877, a high school curriculum was added. In 1882, the first four students to graduate high school were W.H. Haskins, Minnie Battles, Idella Black, and Mary Nease. By 1890, the school had been renamed for President Abraham Lincoln. Valuing their public education, many Lincoln School graduates became teachers; of 33 high school graduates in the first 8 classes, 11 would become schoolteachers. Dr. Edward Alexander Bouchet (Principal 1908-1913) added an intellectual rigor to Lincoln’s curriculum. The nation’s first Black Ph.D., Bouchet earned a doctorate in physics from Yale University in 1876. (Continued on other side)
Side B: (Continued from other side) Lincoln Colored School handed out its last high school diploma in 1918. Despite earlier attempts to desegregate Gallipolis schools, it did not occur until Robert Mitchell filed a 1918 petition asking that his daughter, Lillian Mitchell, attend the newly created Gallia Academy High School. The victorious ruling in Mitchell vs. the Board of Education of the City School District of the City of Gallipolis, Ohio, was the first court-ordered school integration in Ohio. The city’s primary school children, however, continued to be segregated for another 33 years. After P.T.A. President Pearl Scott won a 1951 petition to transfer the remaining Lincoln students to the Gallipolis system, the by-then dilapidated Lincoln Colored School closed. A beacon of hope and opportunity, Lincoln Colored School educated the Black children of Gallipolis for eight decades.
