240 N. 6th Street ( before 1100 East Broadway)

When it was founded in 1886, Lincoln School was a combined elementary and high school for Black students, located at Sixth Street and St. Louis Avenue. A 1902 school census shows that 287 students were enrolled that year, and the school had an 89 percent attendance rate. Minnie C. Scott, Mary E. Scott, and Fannie Edwards made up the first class of high school graduates in 1894. As Principal B.F. Bowles wrote in a 1901 letter to the East St. Louis superintendent, the majority of graduates from the high school department became teachers.

Lincoln School opened in 1886 as a school for Black students. In 1881, John Robinson, who was formerly enslaved and a Civil War veteran, helped lead a protest of Black mothers and students into the all-white Clay School to petition for appropriate educational opportunities and facilities. The advocacy effort, during which Robinson guarded students and conveyed their demands to the school administration, prompted the school board to build Lincoln School. In 1909, the Lincoln building became the headquarters for the East St. Louis Board of Education, and Lincoln School moved to 1100 East Broadway. Following the 1917 East St. Louis Race Riots, the school building later served as a junior high and as offices for East St. Louis School District 189 after multiple new schools were built.

Despite the building’s historic significance to Black residents of East St. Louis, it has been empty or underutilized for decades. East St. Louis School District 189 vacated the school in 1975. In 1999, the Ministers United Against Suffering purchased the school to use it as a shelter for the unhoused. Though East St. Louis experienced massive population decline and widespread demolition throughout the mid-20th century, this storied building has survived.

The school was named for Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth president of the United States, who led the nation during the Civil War. Although personally opposed to slavery, Lincoln initially declared that he would not interfere with slavery in order to maintain the loyalty of key border states. However, on January 1, 1863, under pressure from the Radical Republicans in his party, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed enslaved people in the states rebelling against the Union. About three-quarters of all enslaved people fell under the proclamation's scope, although it could only be enforced as the Union army advanced. The remaining enslaved population was freed in December 1865 with the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment.

In 1950, Lincoln High School moved from its location on Broadway to a new building on Bond. The school’s many prominent alumni include jazz musician Miles Davis, who graduated in 1944. Among its most well-known graduates is Olympic gold medalist Jackie Joyner-Kersee, who was born in 1962 and was a standout on Lincoln’s track teams. Under the leadership of coach Nino Fennoy, those teams won consecutive Illinois High School Association (IHSA) Class AA championships in 1978, 1979, and 1980. In 1988, Joyner-Kersee was inducted into the Lincoln High School Hall of Fame during a special ceremony at the school.