While the Fayetteville School District was segregated by race, Lincoln School served Black students of Fayetteville from the beginning in the late 1930s after the closing of Henderson School. It closed in 1965 as the last historically White elementary schools across the city were desegregated.
Betty Davis recalled the day that the students moved from Henderson School to Lincoln School. She said they gathered their books and marched down the hill to Lincoln School, singing a song fashioned for the occasion, leaving behind their old school and moving into their new school
Historian J.B. Hogan wrote of the new building that it retained some of another old school, the first Jefferson School:
“In 1935, some of the bricks from the old Jefferson School (located at South and Church) were used in the construction of a new school. This school was located on the southeast corner of South Willow Avenue and East Center Street in the heart of Spout Spring Hollow, the historically and predominantly Black section of town. The new school was named Lincoln and it replaced the older Henderson School. The first principal was Herman Caldwell, and the library at the school was named after local poet George Ballard.”
In the fall of 1937, Caldwell organized a Constitution Day for Friday, Sept. 17, according to the Northwest Arkansas Times. Activities included singing the “Star Spangled Banner,” joining in prayer with the Rev. J.W. Webb, reciting parts of the Constitution by the junior-high-age students and listening to the radio address of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
A student chorus was organized that fall, too, and the singers — Henrietta Ballard, Minerva Hoover, Frances Hoover, Louise Hall, Lodene Fisher, Rosetta Fisher, Lillian Parker, Virginia Brown and Ruby Ballard — performed on the Amateur Night program at the National Guard Armory. They sang “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” “Hard Trials” and “Look Away.” They were directed by Hazel Caldwell.
Lincoln School continued to provide education from 1st through 8th grade, as Henderson had previously, but no high school grades.
In 1954, the Fayetteville School District began integration of schools, starting with older grades first and adding younger grades gradually. By 1965, the city’s elementary schools had integrated, and Lincoln School was closed as a school.
For a period, the building served as a community center and initially showed promise, but the school district closed the building, citing insurance concerns. After being demolished, the site was purchased by the Washington County Housing Authority and an apartment complex was built across the hillside for low-income families.