AATLC provides educational personnel, services, and equipment to the children, adults, and seniors residing in the economically depressed community/village of Lincoln Heights, Ohio, which lies north of the city's downtown core and is situated in the Millcreek Valley. This community has been historically underserved and is historically African American in its citizenry.

 

Lincoln Heights’ history begins in the 1920s when Black Americans moved into this land mass north of the city’s core. It was a time of severe segregation and one of the few or the only area open to African Americans as Cincinnati’s citizens moved from the concentrated downtown river basin. Basic resources were very limited especially when compared to surrounding White and wealthy suburbs. Efforts continued to contain Black citizens within their boundaries and to cut them off from valuable and necessary resources.

Lincoln Heights was incorporated in 1946, successfully gerrymandering the city/village lines to remove valuable industries and tax revenues.

Gerrymandering also demanded that the newly incorporated community build its own public schools and disallowed Black children from attending predominately White city or county schools. At the same time, 8 predominately White and mostly wealthy suburbs that surrounded Lincoln Heights were consolidated into the Princeton School District. Lincoln Heights was not included in this 1950s consolidation.

These events went hand in hand in creating segregated schools and occurred just as the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruled that segregation was unconstitutional.

This defacto segregation ensured that the Lincoln Heights’ citizens and students suffered inequities in many aspects and for many decades.

In the 1970s, segregated schools were finally challenged with threats of law suits. Consequently, Lincoln Heights schools were successfully merged with the Princeton School district.

All of these events involving Lincoln Heights were chronicled in a 2005 book written by the President of AATLC and entitled Fly in the Ointment: School Segregation and Desegregation in the Ohio Valley.