In Their Own Words: The Remarkable Journey of Lincoln’s Class of 1950

Yearbooks preserve photographs, names, teams, clubs, and accomplishments. But one of the most meaningful traditions found in Lincoln High School’s 1950 yearbook is something more personal: the senior class wrote its own history.

Across three pages, the students retraced their journey from their first uncertain days of high school to the proud moment when commencement was finally within reach. They recorded the classmates who led them, the activities that filled their days, the honors they earned, and the friendships they formed.

This was history written not about them, but by them.

Thirty Seekers of Knowledge

Their story begins in September 1945, when 30 students entered Lincoln High School. With youthful confidence and a touch of literary flair, they described themselves as “thirty seekers of knowledge” entering a “land of learning.”

The timing was significant. The Second World War had just ended, and America was beginning a new chapter. Yet segregation remained firmly embedded in the nation’s schools and public life. These African American students entered high school knowing that their education would take place within a system that did not provide them the same opportunities available to white students.

Still, their class history does not begin with defeat. It begins with purpose.

The students wrote that they quickly became “a real working unit” under the guidance of Lincoln’s faculty and their elected class officers: Florence Moore, president; Eugene Hairston, vice president; Beverly Pervall, secretary; and Kenneth Parker, treasurer.

Beverly Pervall was my grandmother and, with her future husband and fellow Lincoln alumnus Eugene Stradwick, is one of the namesakes of our Foundation. Reading her name among the freshman class officers allows me to see her in a new way: not simply as the grandmother our family loved, but as a young student already accepting responsibility and earning the trust of her classmates.

More Than Lessons in a Classroom

The class history quickly dispels any notion that Lincoln students experienced a narrow or uneventful education. Their high school years were filled with music, athletics, scholarship, leadership, performance, and service.

Class members participated in football, basketball, track, band, glee clubs, the girls’ sextette, student council, the Hi-Y organization, Junior Town Hall, majorettes, radio programs, and a spring operetta. Students distinguished themselves as athletes, musicians, singers, speakers, and scholars.

Charles Dillon and Emanuel Rogers played football. Jessie Jackson, Marion Newman, and Ovell Bush became stars of the Girls’ Glee Club. Eugene Hairston and Charles Dillon participated in both band and athletics. Marion Newman, Julia Collins, and Anna Ruth represented the class among Lincoln’s newly organized high-stepping majorettes.

Several students also received Stifel prizes for scholastic achievement, including Florence Moore, Charles Dillon, Anna Ruth, Ovell Bush, Delores Shelton, and Jessie Jackson.

These names and activities help us see Lincoln as its students experienced it: alive with music, competition, ideas, laughter, discipline, and school spirit. Segregation defined the system surrounding them, but it did not define the full measure of their lives.

They learned. They performed. They competed. They led.

And they excelled.

The Difficult Road to Commencement

The class also recorded something sobering.

The 30 students who entered Lincoln in 1945 became 25 by their second year and 23 by their junior year. By September 1949, only 17 members of the original class remained. A newcomer from Buckhannon increased the senior class to 18, but another member was lost during the year.

The students described themselves as having “survived the arduous journey through high school.”

That word—survived—carries weight.

The yearbook does not explain why so many students left along the way. Their departures may have resulted from family responsibilities, employment, relocation, illness, military service, financial hardship, or other circumstances. We should not claim answers the record does not provide.

What the students make clear is that reaching graduation required perseverance.

For African American students attending a segregated school in 1950, a diploma represented much more than the completion of coursework. It stood for determination in a society that routinely placed barriers in their path. Every remaining senior had traveled what the class called “the difficult road of learning” toward commencement day.

Their pride was well earned.

Seniors at Last

When the students finally reached their last year, their excitement burst from the page:

“September 1949! Seniors at last!”

Their senior year was active and ambitious. Led by Willie Park, Jessie Jackson, Ovell Bush, and Delores Shelton, the class participated throughout school life while maintaining what it called its “usual high scholarship.”

The students selected maroon and white as their class colors. Maroon represented the courage with which they intended to face life and its struggles. White represented the purity of their ideals.

They also took special pride in accomplishing something their predecessors had not experienced in a generation: they were the first Lincoln class since 1920 to have a yearbook.

That detail makes the pages before us even more important. The Class of 1950 was not merely featured in a historical record. Its members helped create one.

They understood that their experiences deserved to be documented. They preserved their names, achievements, relationships, and aspirations for people they could never have imagined would one day read them.

That is precisely why archives matter.

“Today’s Intentions Are Tomorrow’s Deeds”

As commencement approached, the students acknowledged the sadness of leaving their friends and their beloved Lincoln High School. They knew one phase of life was ending and that a broader, more challenging one was beginning.

But they intended to meet it bravely.

They concluded their history with a class motto that still speaks with remarkable power:

“Today’s intentions are tomorrow’s deeds.”

For the Class of 1950, these were not empty words. Their intentions had already carried them through years of study, changing class rosters, demanding activities, athletic contests, musical performances, leadership responsibilities, and the long road to graduation.

Their class history preserves more than what they did. It preserves what they believed about themselves.

They believed they were scholars.

They believed they possessed courage.

They believed their ideals mattered.

They believed they were prepared to contribute to their community and country.

Most importantly, they believed the future was something they could help shape.

Preserving the History They Began

There is something profoundly moving about reading young people’s account of their own journey more than 75 years later. They could not know where history would carry them or how much America would change during their lifetimes. They could not know that one of their classmates, Beverly Pervall, would one day have a heritage foundation named in her honor.

But they knew their journey had meaning.

By writing their class history, these students became their own first historians. Today, the Eugene and Beverly Stradwick Heritage Foundation has the privilege of continuing the work they began.

If your family has photographs, diplomas, programs, yearbooks, letters, or memories connected to Lincoln School and its students, we invite you to help us preserve them. Every name carries a story, and every story adds another piece to our understanding of African American life in Wheeling and the Upper Ohio Valley.

The Class of 1950 recorded its intentions.

Their lives became the deeds.

Now it is our responsibility—and our honor—to ensure that neither is forgotten.

-T

Historical Terminology Note

This article includes historical terms such as “colored” and “Negro” when quoting original sources or identifying organizations as they were known at the time. These terms reflect the language and racial conditions of their era; their inclusion is not an endorsement of their use today.

In our own narrative, we use Black and African American, as appropriate. We preserve historical wording to document the past faithfully while honoring the dignity, humanity, and experiences of the people whose stories we share.