Lincoln's Accomplishments Were Not Limited to Athletics

From December 2014 to April 2016, the Bradenton Herald published several articles about the many outstanding athletes that graduated from Lincoln Memorial High School. Lost among those athletic accolades, however, is the tremendous amount of academic achievement that occurred at Lincoln and the lasting impact it has had on the community.

Lincoln Memorial High School was Manatee County's Black high school and home of the mighty Trojans before integration saw its students relocated to Manatee High and the school itself reduced to Lincoln Middle School in 1968. It had average graduating classes of 60-70 students per year in a school with around 1,000 students in grades 7 through 12.

I attended Lincoln Memorial High School from 1956 until my senior year (1961-62) when I was recruited to participate in a Quaker Negro Student project. That year, I left Lincoln Memorial High to attend an all-white high school, New Hartford Central School, with a student population of 2,400 students in New Hartford, New York.

I lived with a white family, attended the school, joined their church; played football, basketball, and ran track; being a part of the activities that I had done and enjoyed at Lincoln Memorial High back in Palmetto. The Quaker project was designed to address the cultural lag that the Quakers believed had evolved during segregated education.

The aforementioned articles chronicled many athletes who had gone on to play for professional teams in football, basketball, and baseball, including students like Waite Bellamy, Willie Jones, Coach Eddie Shannon, Henry Lawrence, and several others.

I played football in 1960-61, under Coach Shannon and Alonzo Vereen, both of whom gave me training and great guidance in my career choice. I was, admittedly, nowhere near the athlete as the people chosen in the various articles.

However, I was disturbed that the newspaper’s interest concentrated on only the outstanding athletes and left out one of the untold treasures of Lincoln Memorial High School–its elevated level of academic excellence.

I attended all of my education except my senior year in Manatee County public schools, then segregated. In this segregated environment, the district produced several outstanding Black scholars that went on in education to be awarded their Doctorate degrees such as Larry Shannon (Ph.D. Iowa State, 1970, Biology); Charles Bacon (Ph.D., Microbiology, University of Michigan 1975); Beverly Surcy Reed (Ed. D, Reading, and Writing, Rutgers University 1986); Frederick Bacon (Ph.D., Chemistry University of California 1975); and Joseph Reed (Ph.D., Chemistry, Brown University, 1974). All but one are working in major industries, universities or colleges, or in government.

All of these accomplished professionals were educated by a group of dedicated administrators, led by Carlos E. Haile, along with outstanding faculty and role models, such as James Tillman (algebra and advanced algebra), Theodore Tillis (biology and zoology), John Hall (chemistry), Lloyd Garris (geometry and trigonometry), Johnny Jones (English), Rebecca Myers (English and literature), James Lang (physical science), Oscar Sanders (American and world history), and Larry Shannon (biology), just to name a few.

What remains culturally important is that Dr. Larry Shannon, who received his Baccalaureate degree in biology from Florida A&M in 1962, returned to his hometown of Palmetto to teach at Lincoln Memorial High, his Alma Mater. And later, he married Velma from Tampa and both went to Iowa State in 1965 and received their PhDs in Biology in 1970.

In addition, English teacher and classroom advisor Johnny Lee Jones left Lincoln Memorial High School to complete his Ph.D. from Montana State University in 1968; and later became Superintendent for the Miami-Dade Public School District. These achievements were due to an outstanding group of faculty at Lincoln Memorial High School whose contributions warrant the same reverence and recollection that is accorded to the accomplishments in sports at Lincoln.

Joseph Reed

Ph.D., Chemistry