LINCOLN INSTITUTE

The 'Lincoln Institute' was an all-black boarding high school in Lincoln Ridge, Kentucky, near Louisville, that operated from 1912 to 1966.
The school was created by the trustees of Berea College after the Day Law passed the Kentucky Legislature in 1904, putting to an end the racially integrated education that had gone on at Berea since the end of the Civil War. The name Lincoln was chosen when the founders of the school realized that there was no educational institution in the state of Kentucky named after Abraham Lincoln.^[1]
The original intention of the founders was for Lincoln to be a college as well as a high school, but by the 1930s it gave up its junior college function. Lincoln offered both vocational education and standard high school classes, and the students produced their own food on the campus' 444 acres.
One notable alumnus of the Lincoln Institute was Whitney Young, Jr., a prominent leader of the civil rights movement and the director of the National Urban League from 1961 to 1971. Young was born on the campus in 1921, and his father, Whitney Young, Sr., was the longtime principal of the school.
In 1966, with the rise of integrated education, the Lincoln Institute closed down. The Lincoln School for the Gifted, a school for gifted but disadvantaged children, operated on the site from 1966 to 1970. Since 1972, the old Lincoln campus has been used as the Whitney Young, Jr. Job Corps Center.
The campus also houses the Whitney Young Birthplace and Museum, a National Historic Landmark that presents the story of the Lincoln Institute and Whitney Young, Jr.
Today, the Lincoln Foundation, which was founded along with the school, carries on the work of the Lincoln Institute by providing educational programs for disadvantaged youths in the Louisville area and preserving the Lincoln Institute's historic legacy.

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References

1. George C. Wright, "The Founding of Lincoln Institute," The Filson Club History Quarterly, January 1975, p. 60.

External links

★ Lincoln Institute Alumni Website

★ Lincoln Foundation Homepage