The Trenton Times published the following article on May 23, 2013. To read the full article, click here.
Trenton City Museum marks closing of New Lincoln School exhibit with ceremony
By Christina Izzo/The Times of Trenton
on May 23, 2013 at 9:00 AM, updated May 23, 2013 at 9:01 AMTRENTON — A historical exhibit on the New Lincoln School — the focus of a legal battle over desegregation — has been such a success that the Trenton City Museum will hold a closing ceremony Saturday to mark its end.
“This exhibit has had remarkable attendance,” Trenton Museum Society Vice President Richard Willinger said.
The Lincoln School was a segregated school for black children up through the mid-1940s until parents challenged the school district’s refusal to allow their children to attend an almost all-white school nearby, Junior High No. 2.
The case went up to the New Jersey Supreme Court, which decided in favor of the two parents, Gladys Hedgepeth and Berline Williams, and later on the ruling was used in the famed Brown vs Board of Education U.S. Supreme Court battle to help overturn the “separate but equal” mantra used to enforce desegregation.
The Trenton exhibit also explored the Lincoln Homes — a housing project built for working, low-income blacks in 1940.
Saturday’s closing ceremony, to begin at 1 p.m., will be conducted by Elizabeth Carter Lacy, an alumnus of New Lincoln School and a long-time teacher in the city public school system.
She served as guest curator of the museum show.
“This has been such a great experience for me and my former classmates and neighbors,” Lacy said. “It has been so much fun to see former students of the school and neighbors from Lincoln Homes. This exhibit showcases a very important part of Trenton’s history, and its African-American history.”
Willinger praised Lacy for her contributions to the exhibit held at the Ellarslie house in Cadwalader Park. “Betty Lacy has accumulated an amazing collection of artifacts, articles and photographs and has put together a top-notch exhibit.”
The exhibit, “Trenton’s Educational Legacy: The New Lincoln School,” opened in February and examined the school under segregation and the city’s black community from 1924 to 1946.
The North Montgomery Street school opened in 1924 and contained elementary and junior high schools. Graduates of New Lincoln School were very successful, officials said, with many receiving jobs in education, law, public service, medicine and sports.
The Lincoln School was desegregated in 1946 as a result of the Hedgepeth-Williams suit, and is now known as the Rivera School.
Howard Crossland, a noted area singer, will sing several songs as part of the ceremony and light refreshments will be served.