The first school in East St. Louis named for Abraham Lincoln was a 1st–12th-grade school for black children that opened in 1886 at Sixth Street and St. Louis Avenue.

In 1909, during a period of rapid expansion in East St. Louis, this school was closed, with its building becoming the headquarters of the city board of education, and East St. Louis Lincoln High School opened as a high school for blacks at 1100 East Broadway.

By the late 1940s, with black migration continuing and the school system in the city still effectively segregated, the school was so overcrowded that the auditorium, the library, the study hall, and the music room had all been converted into classrooms; the school board promised to build a second black high school but allocated insufficient money, prompting a sit-in in 1949 for equal facilities.

[4] In 1950 the school moved to a new building at 1211 Bond Avenue;[1] in the early 1960s students began to be permitted to transfer to the predominantly white East St. Louis Senior High School if Lincoln did not offer the electives they wanted.

[6] The Lincoln Tigers and Tigerettes won 29 state championships in sports, 14 of them in girls' track and field within a 17-year period;[2] the girls' track and field coach, Nino Fennoy, became the coach at East St. Louis Senior High School after consolidation, as did the boys' basketball coach, Bennie Lewis Sr., whose program dominated the state in the 1980s.