The History of Lincoln School: A Look at the school from 1951-Present

By Linda Thomas

The year is 1951. A new school with six classrooms has opened in northern Brunswick County — a school to serve only black high school students. These are the years before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on that Montgomery, Alabama, bus, years before Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963, years before school desegregation and the race riots that ensued, and years before the designation of African-American came into common use.  

Lincoln High School’s first graduating class in 1951 held just four students, but two of them went on to earn college degrees and returned to the school as teachers. Until 1968, the rural school in Leland served as an all-black high school and that was nothing out of the ordinary.

The 1960s brought change. 1967 was the “Freedom of Choice” year, when parents could choose to send their children to any school, breaking out of the strictly segregated school model. Predictably, racist posters and race riots ensued, disturbing the quiet town of Leland as a few courageous black families made the move to send their children to the white schools.

Fast forward 40 years to 2007. The old Lincoln High School is now Lincoln Elementary School, with a student mix that reflects the population of the area — 42 percent white, 25 percent African-American, 23 percent Hispanic, 8 percent multi-racial, 1 percent American Indian, and 1 percent of other races, including Asian. Talk about a rainbow of colors! This mix of children is a lively bunch, eager to learn and eager to share. The school lunch menu now includes a multicultural mix of stir-fry dishes, tortilla wraps and taco salads in addition to Southern, home-style items like beans and rice, collard greens, pizza, hot dogs and other typical school lunch fare.

How did this transition to today’s vibrant and diversified school take place?

Helen Davis, now principal of Lincoln Elementary School, remembers. Her father, a Sunny Point employee, and her mother, a “domestic engineer” and seasonal factory worker, were always looking for ways to help their children advance. Instead of keeping young Helen in the familiar all-black academic world at Lincoln, they chose to send her to the newly integrated Leland (North Brunswick) High School. Overcoming the pressures of this new environment, Helen graduated in 1973 with North Brunswick High’s first graduating class.

She fulfilled her father’s dream for her by earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Elementary Education at Fayetteville State University. This lead to teaching posts in New Hanover and Brunswick County schools, and a desire to help more students and her peers. Davis returned to college to earn another master’s degree in School Administration in 1997 and now has come full circle, returning to Lincoln Elementary School in 2005 to serve as principal.

Meanwhile, through the 1960s and into the ’70s, the original school buildings housed Lincoln Elementary (formally Lincoln High School) students, most all of them black. Over the years the population slowly changed, as it did all across America.  

Through all this change, the constant at Lincoln School was James F. Clemmons, the first and only principal from 1951 to 1984. His tenure spanned the whole transition from an all-black school to full integration. James “Jimbo” Clemmons was a truly dedicated educator, an advocate for his students and a mentor for his teachers.

Teacher Nancy Nipper was hired by Clemmons in 1978 and remembers him as a colorful, personable and fair-minded man, very supportive of the teachers. Nipper says, “He told us, ‘I’m not going to give you everything you want, but I’ll give you what you need.’” He worked hard to create a true family atmosphere at the school, and the teachers, parents and students all benefited.  

As a student at Lincoln, Helen Davis remembers Principal Clemmons as “awesome” and very knowledgeable, always out in the community and at the school sometimes every day of the week. After he retired in 1984, Clemmons continued advocating for children by serving on the Brunswick Country Board of Education until his death in 1991.

The family atmosphere that Clemmons cultivated at Lincoln School has lasted through all its transitions up to today. The teachers of the “Lincoln family” raised their kids together, shared teaching ideas and helped each other in and out of school. One of the things that Nancy Nipper remembers fondly from her 26½ years of teaching at Lincoln was the Teacher’s Talent Show that the staff put on for the students. “The teachers had even more fun with it than the kids,” she recalls with a laugh.

Like many long-term teachers, Nipper has had many students return as adults to ask her if she remembers them and what they were like as children. “Teachers remember ‘their’ children . . . they’re all different and memorable in their own way,” she says. One young lady reminded her of the time Mrs. Nipper had asked her to run an errand. She asked, “Mrs. Nipper, did you ask me to run that errand on purpose because you knew I’d tied my shoelaces to the chair?”

“We always had great participation from the parents and good turnout for all the kids’ programs. This community has always been very involved with the school,” continues Nipper.

Carrying on the Clemmons tradition, Principal Helen Davis also cultivates family and community, and that’s a challenge with nearly 700 pre-K through fifth-grade students at today’s Lincoln Elementary. With so many working parents, it’s tough, but the teachers and parents at Lincoln really pull together. The PTA group is very active, and the school has lots of special events throughout the year.

“Our Fall Festival is a longstanding tradition,” says Davis. “It’s a fun day with games, food and even an old-fashioned cakewalk.” Every nine weeks the school has a Family Night with a special focus on a particular learning area.

Davis continues, “We do lots of student recognition to encourage them to LEARN, EXCEL and SUCCEED. That’s our school motto.”

Davis and her team are working through the latest round of school-building renovations. Space is tight, but that family team atmosphere makes it bearable. Running a staff of 100 that includes 42 certified teachers, 23 teacher’s assistants, resource people, cafeteria staff, and custodians from temporary cramped quarters is tricky, but Davis and her team stay focused on meeting the needs of the children.

As for educators everywhere, that’s the big challenge — meeting all the needs of a very diverse student population. Resources like a full-time bilingual teaching assistant and a part-time English as a Second Language teacher help. Lincoln Elementary also offers tutoring and even opens up for “Saturday School,” a chance for students to spend more time in the computer lab, especially on math and reading.

On changes brought about by today’s society, Davis notes, “My mother was always there when I got home from school. But today, in most families both parents need to work and child care is a very big issue. The Communities in Schools programs are a huge help to our working parents. The tutoring and after-school child care they offer make all the difference.”

Lincoln School has lots of parent and grandparent volunteers to help in the classroom. There’s also a partnership with Brunswick County middle and high schools that sends older students into the school to tutor the younger children, a win-win situation for both groups. The DARE drug education program has been in the school for many years and has helped keep the school drug-free.

Another big challenge for educators today is meeting the standards of the No Child Left Behind Act, and Lincoln Elementary is no exception. Accountability is certainly needed, but the requirements of the program mean that the score of a single child can pull down a whole school. Categories are structured so that a student may fall into several sub-groups, like race, economically disadvantaged, students with disabilities, limited proficiency in English, etc. Their scores may actually be counted several times and that hurts school scores across the board. “We struggle with that”, says Davis, “The standardized tests don’t give a complete picture. They don’t reflect the progress we may be making in developing social and emotional skills, and in creating thinkers, readers and problem solvers.”

Along with Brunswick County Early College High School, Lincoln Elementary recently received special funding to allow their students to connect to a wider world of education resources. The money from federal eRate grants will fund distance-learning technology for the school and open up a host of teaching and learning opportunities. Lincoln is the first elementary school in the county to receive these funds.

The school already has a colorful and informative website and is using it to create two-way communication. The site invites parents, teachers, staff and students to log on and participate in an interactive survey anonymously. This gives powerful feedback about what’s working well and what needs improvement. It’s a great way to get input from everyone involved at the school, especially busy people who may not have time to chat during school hours.

When asked what makes her day, Helen Davis doesn’t hesitate, “I love to see the smiles on the students’ faces. To see them excited about learning, and to see my teachers excited about teaching. That does it for me.”

The Lincoln School of today is vastly different from the school that opened its doors in 1951. Little remains of that original building. The only remaining section now houses the Media Center and fourth and fifth grade classrooms. When the current construction dust settles there will be a nice new entrance and administrative offices.

The school is now composed of several buildings connected by covered walkways, and the halls are lively and decorated with all manner of student artwork. One wall features individual posters titled “All about Me” with details of the student’s family, hobbies, likes and dislikes and most importantly, their dreams for the future. If those posters are any indication, we’ll have some very determined young people coming out of the Lincoln Elementary School in the next few years!

James Clemmons would love to see that the family spirit he fostered at Lincoln School lives on today.

SIDEBAR MATERIAL

Lincoln Elementary School Then and Now

Then (Early ’60s)                       Now (2007)

School lunch                 20¢                               $1.60 (40¢ on reduced lunch program)

Breakfast:            at home, if any                                    $1.00  (30¢ on reduced program)

On the menu:                Stew & bread                Tortilla Wraps

Population:                    100 percent black           A rainbow of colors and ethnicities

What you studied           The three R’s                 The environment, science, technology,
                                                                        recent history               

Where you got
books:                          Library                          Media Center   

Your tools:          Blackboards and chalk             Multimedia, computers and color markers

Classrooms:         Simple, Spartan, alike               Colorful, busy, crowded, personalized by
                                                                        each teacher

End of Year                  Exams                          Standardized tests