The Lincoln Normal School in Marion, Alabama was an important institution in the history of African-American education in the South. Founded by freed slaves shortly after the Civil War, it educated students from kindergarten to high school, with a special focus on teacher training. It was open for more than one hundred years, from 1868 1970, and its influential alumni include Coretta Scott King, Edythe Scott Bagley, and the sociologist Andrew Billingsley.
The A.S. Williams III Americana Collection at the University of Alabama owns two rare photograph albums kept by teachers at the school in the early decades of the twentieth century. This website uses some of the images from these albums to illustrate the history of the school, its campus, and its students and faculty during the early decades of the twentieth century.