“Janitorial Engineering”
This chapter discusses Lincoln's growth and development as the state's only boarding high school for African American students. In 1938 the state legislature passed a bill requiring counties that lacked accommodations for black students to pay their tuition and send them to accredited high schools elsewhere. The bill solved a problem for local school districts that had neither the funds nor the inclination to educate black children. Lincoln Institute was a logical destination for such students, and it became a state-funded institution. Young still had to maneuver through prevailing racist attitudes, such as the state's objection to his plan to add an electrical engineering program. Only after he renamed the program “janitorial engineering” did he gain approval. Young's efforts strongly influenced his own children, Arnita, Eleanor, and Whitney Jr., into lives of service. This chapter also introduces John Norman Cunningham, a Lincoln student whose experiences are woven through the narrative.