Before the Brown vs Board of Education Supreme Court ruling in 1954 banned segregated schools—Hinton students of color had their own school. Established in 1897 as The Hinton Colored School and later (in 1916) under its new name the Lincoln School, it was dedicated to the education of Black children and youth from first grade to high school graduation.
In 2003, several Lincoln School alumnae seeded the Lincoln School Scholarship Fund at the Hinton Area Foundation with $2,500 “To provide scholarships to Summers County students to honor the memory of Lincoln High School” and is directed toward descendants of Lincoln School alumnae. The Lincoln School Scholarship Fund awarded $700 for the 2022/23 academic year to SCCHS Senior, Trinity Crawford. I spoke recently to Mrs. Kenni Pierce of Talcott, who is an alum of the Lincoln High School Class of 1960 (their last graduating class) and is an active donor to the Scholarship Fund.
Mrs. Pierce is one of 12 siblings, six of whom graduated from Lincoln High School. Her father, James Jackson, Sr., who drove a school bus for 37 years for Lincoln School students, gave his younger children the option to graduate from Lincoln High School or Talcott High School. Out of the 12, Kenni was the sixth to graduate from Lincoln and one of only eight students in her graduating class.
Despite a fire at the Jackson home in 1955, which created real hardship for the Jackson family, education was a high priority for the Jacksons. Mrs. Pierce received a one-time $500 scholarship from the Second Baptist Church of Hinton to attend Bluefield State College for one year. Kenni completed her teaching degree and graduated from West Virginia State Institute (now WV State University) near Charleston WV in 1966. She began her teaching career at the Crossroads School in Ballengee—a one-room schoolhouse with six grades.
Mrs. Pierce has many fond memories of her days at Lincoln School. She related the way Principal E.G. Crawford, made his students feel important and involved in the daily activities of the school, such as shopping at the local A&P for hot lunch supplies, and the special occasions when he would treat students to an outing at Dairy Queen for lunch. Forced integration did not result in immediate educational equity. Rather, it resulted in the loss of familiar activities like the cheerleading squad, sports programs, debutante balls for the social coming out of young ladies, and many Black teachers who lost their jobs. Students had to walk to schools in the communities where they lived because Black students were generally not permitted to ride the buses with White students. Mrs. Pierce said Lincoln was “like a university.”
“A few of the students were adults, who had come back to Hinton to finish their education.”
“The teachers would not let you fail. They were ferocious in their instruction,” she told me. “It was a lovely school.”
Hinton Area Foundation is proud to support the descendants of Lincoln School in helping them develop their capacities to advance the communities where they settle to raise their own families.
