The Lincoln School Story
By: Andrea Torrice, Original Release Date: 2017, Expanded Version Release Date: 2024
The Lincoln School Story follows the heroic fight for school desegregation led by a handful of Ohio mothers and their children in 1954. In the wake of Brown v. Board of Education, school districts nationwide were mandated to integrate. But when African American mothers in Hillsboro, Ohio, tried to enroll their children in the local, historically white schools, the school board refused to comply.
Five mothers and their children took the school board to court. With Constance Baker Motley as the lead lawyer and help from a fledgling NAACP chapter, they started one of the nation’s first civil rights marches to end school segregation. While the lawsuit wound through the courts, the mothers and children marched every day, despite threats, cross burnings and job losses.
They marched in sun, rain and snow for nearly two years till the mothers won their court case. Their children became the first Black students to attend a high-quality local elementary school. Their judicial victory in the Midwest inspired Black school parents in communities across the country.
The Lincoln School Story is the first public television documentary to feature these women and highlight their struggle–and Ohio’s role–in the early civil rights movement. The program weaves personal interviews with rare archival photos and film.
The program was commissioned by the Ohio Humanities Council, with additional funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Ohio Arts Council and other funders. Thanks to all of them for bringing this story to the public.
The PBS release and broadcast dates are anticipated for summer 2024.
View airtimes and screening events at Ohio Humanities website
Download resource guides at Ohio Humanities website
To purchase or rent the film, go to bullfrogfilms.com.
Now airing on your local public television station.
“The Lincoln School Story is an important, powerful, moving tale well told.
It reminds us that pivotal historical moments do not start with iconic events we all know — the 1963 March on Washington, The Civil Rights Act of 1964, The Voting Rights Act of 1965 — but are the culmination of smaller, crucial actions often lost to history.
What happened in the small town of Hillsboro, Ohio 70 years ago is one such example brought to vivid life in this film. With a powerful weave of witness interview, historical scholarship and archive footage, viewers are brought into a world where all bets were off in the anxious silence after the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Brown vs. Board of Education decision of 1954. The country held its breath waiting to see how that decision would play out in white-run communities prepared to defy that ruling. And how a handful of mothers and their children with courage and determination found that they could move mountains.
In the end, what viewers will learn from this fine film is that righting wrongs in ones community can change a nation, that the peaceful, tireless actions of the Hillsboro mothers tipped a domino and became a blueprint that helped tumble down the walls of segregation across the country.”
Jack MacDonald
Documentary Film Teacher