The State Normal School

Under George N. Card’s guidance, the school reorganized in 1874 as the State Normal School for Colored Students in Marion and expanded to include a teacher-training program while still carrying on its primary education mission. In late 1886, a group of local whites petitioned to have the school removed after an altercation between white students from Howard College and Black Lincoln students. In the petition, the group complained that the school was dissuading prospective white students from coming to Marion. Some Black residents responded by boycotting white businesses. The petition was received favorably by the legislature, which agreed in 1887 to fund an African American college or university somewhere other than Marion.

Ultimately, the school’s trustees chose Montgomery, and the last Marion class graduated in June 1888. The Marion school was split, and the teacher-training component moved to Montgomery and became the Alabama Colored People’s University. This school would evolve into present-day Alabama State University.

In 1896, Talladega College teacher Mary Elizabeth Phillips was named principal of the school. She rallied the school and the surrounding townspeople to raise pledges totaling $1,300 as well as an additional $100 pledge from the students; the teachers agreed to forego their salaries for a year as long as the town would supply them food. Phillips’s dedication to the school was further demonstrated in 1902 when she learned how to lay bricks and taught her students to do so to finish a school building when funds ran short to pay brick masons.

By the time that Phillips died in 1927, the school had expanded to nearly 600 students, 26 teachers, 11 buildings serving various functions, and 40 acres of land that included a farm. Two dormitories housed students who did not live within easy daily travel distance from the school. In 1939, the school dedicated its newly finished auditorium to Phillips.

During the Great Depression, Lincoln School suffered financial hardships along with the rest of the nation. To save money, the dormitories were closed and tuition was reduced from $25 to $9 to encourage enrollment. By 1938, the AMA had persuaded Perry County to provide a small amount of the school’s teacher salaries, enabling all students to go to the school tuition-free. The school survived the decade, and in 1943 the school appointed its first African American principal, Ernest Smith, who was pastor of the local black Methodist church. White teachers had taught alongside African American teachers for years at the school, but when Perry County began providing money to the school in 1943, these teachers were let go, and Lincoln became an all-black institution. The AMA continued subsidizing the principal’s salary as late as 1954 and allowed Perry County use of the school facilities for free but did not deed the property to the county.

In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court declared segregation in public schools unconstitutional in the Brown v. Board of Education case, resulting in the eventual closing of Lincoln and other segregated schools. In 1960, the AMA severed its remaining ties with the school, and the state took over full operation. Lincoln celebrated its 100th anniversary in 1967 and graduated its final high school class in 1969 and its final sixth-grade class in 1970, when it ceased operations. The school’s alumni association remains active and celebrates the school’s importance to African Americans in Marion for more than 100 years.

The Marion Nine and the Descendants: A Genealogical Presentation

On November 21, 2011, in the Ralph David Abernathy Hall on the campus of Alabama State University, family historian Gary Franklin served as the guest speaker for a program entitled “The Marion Nine and their Descendants: A Genealogical presentation and Discussion.” The program was hosted by the National Center for the Study of Civil Rights and African American Culture at Alabama State University. In his presentation Franklin sheds light the nine ex-slaves who filed papers incorporating the Lincoln Normal School (a predecessor to Alabama State University) on July 18, 1867. The group of Black men featured in Franklin’s presentation became the school’s first board of trustees. They raised money and provided critical material support during the school’s first decade.

Click here to view this presentation in the Levi Watkins Learning Center's Digital Library.

George N. Card