[5] For example, as a demonstration school, New Lincoln, like its predecessors, attracted widespread attention, including about 1,000 visitors each year.
Science, Art, and Math were generally not linked to Core, but still emphasized hands-on approaches to learning.
The school used a great variety of instruments in teaching, and students played on autoharps, temple blocks, marimbas, and gongs.
Prominent educator William Heard Kilpatrick (a student of John Dewey’s) assisted in founding New Lincoln and became chair of its board.
[12] One of the goals for the school was to help students become competent “in relating constructively with a variety of human beings from different economic levels, religions, races, and nationalities.”[13] Starting in the 1950s, a number of influential Black people enrolled their children at New Lincoln including Harry Belafonte (singer, songwriter, activist and actor), Robert Carter (a prominent civil rights lawyer and judge), Faith Ringgold (painter, writer, sculptor and quilter), and Eileen Jackson Southern (the first black woman to be tenured at Harvard).
[16] In his memoir, then-director of the school Harold Haizlip wrote that, “New Lincoln was firmly committed to integration.
Over time, the board, faculty, and parents decided to increase the minority presence in the school beyond a token level and set fundraising priorities and targets to make this possible.”[17] As a result, many notable alumni, such as some of those listed below, are people of color.
Dr. Mabel Smythe, who was head of the high school from 1959 to 1969, “went to various churches all over Harlem” to look for potential students from that community.
In 1963, Oliver arranged for Ralph Ellison to speak with the senior class about his award-winning book Invisible Man.
That same year Kenneth and Mamie Clark (founders of the Northside Center for Child Development, housed on one floor of the New Lincoln School) arranged with Malcolm X for Mamie to take two 12th grade students, one Black and one white, to meet with Malcolm X at a Black Muslim coffee shop on Lenox Avenue, in Harlem.