Students associated with Volunteer LSU will come together on March 15 to help clean Lincoln Theater, a building in the Old South Baton Rouge neighborhood listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
According to Carl Bakenhus, music junior and Baton Rouge restoration and beautification focus area chair for Volunteer LSU, 15 to 20 students will be present to help with renovations.
“We’ll be helping with remediation of the building,” he said. “Volunteers will be helping clear furniture and clean the place a little bit so it can be remodeled in the future.”
Registration for the project closes today, said graduate assistant for service at Campus Life Angela Russell.
Lincoln Theater will be the home of the Louisiana Black History Hall of Fame Museum. The theater was chosen as the site for the museum because of the huge historical impact it had on the African-American community in Baton Rouge, said Erin Brush Duncan, director of preservation field services at The Foundation for Historical Louisiana.
According to an NRHP document, African-Americans used the theater to watch movies and performances by prominent black musicians during the time of segregation. Patrons in the 1950s enjoyed live performances by artists such as Lionel Hampton and Orchestra and Nat King Cole.
The theater not only served as a place of entertainment for African-Americans, but it was also at the center of the Civil Rights Movement in Baton Rouge during the 1950s.
African-Americans held a bus boycott in Baton Rouge in 1953 according to the NRHP document, which was “seen as an important precursor to the better-known Montgomery Bus Boycott” led by Martin Luther King Jr.
“There are tantalizing bits of information to indicate that perhaps the Lincoln figured prominently as a meeting place for boycott leaders,” the document states.
The Old South Baton Rouge neighborhood is a certified cultural district by the Office of the Lt. Governor and the Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism.
Duncan said the certification is in large part to the presence of Lincoln Theater in the neighborhood.
Kristen Smith, business junior and president of the Student Activities Board for Campus Life, said she plans to attend the project to aid in the theater’s restoration.
“This will be a great thing for the community, because I think a lot of buildings in Baton Rouge, especially in south Baton Rouge, have been abandoned and [those buildings] are pillars and beacons of the community,” she said. “When you restore them, it not only takes away this ugly spot and makes something beautiful out of it, but it restores that beacon, restores that light, that landmark to the community.”
“I think this will be a great thing for the community, because I think a lot of buildings in Baton Rouge, especially in south Baton Rouge, have been abandoned and [those buildings] are pillars and beacons of the community.”
