The Lincoln School

Side A: The Lincoln School, which stood on this site from 1869 to 1956, was a segregated elementary school intended for the city’s African American students, grades one through eight. Hillsboro was the site of the first Northern desegregation suit following the May 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, a decision that abolished the nation’s long standing “separate but equal” doctrine. (Continued on other side) Side B: (Continued from other side) Following a two year legal struggle, led by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and a group of parents, and assisted by Thurgood Marshall, who would later become the first black Supreme Court Justice, the Hillsboro school system was desegregated in 1956. The lawsuit hastened integration in other parts of Ohio, and the north due to national media coverage.