Lyles Consolidated School

The community of Lyles Station, which also includes its school, is an unincorporated community in Patoka Township, Gibson County, Indiana. Lyles Station is one of Indiana's early black rural settlements and the only one remaining. The rural settlement dates from 1849. It was formally named Lyles Station in 1886 to honor Joshua Lyles, a free African American who was one of its early settlers. Lyles migrated with his family from Tennessee to Indiana around 1837.[2][3]

Lyles Station reached its peak in the years between 1880 and 1912, when major structures in the community included a school, railroad depot, a post office, a lumber mill, two general stores, and two churches.[4] By the turn of the twentieth century, Lyles Station had fifty-five homes and a population of more than 800 people; however, the farming community never fully recovered from the Great Flood of 1913, which destroyed much of the town. Most of its residents left to find higher paying jobs and additional education in larger cities.[2][5] By 1997, approximately fifteen families remained at Lyles Station, nearly all of them descended from the original settlers.[4]

In 1864 Joshua Lyles donated the land to build a school in the community.[2] The first school in what became Lyles Stations was a subscription school, where parents paid a fee for their children to attend. Established about 1865, its classes were held in a local church building. The community's second school, a three-room schoolhouse, replaced the earlier school. It was built across the road from the Wayman Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church.[6]

Lyles Consolidated School was Lyles Station's third school. Although the population of Lyles Station declined after the flood of 1913, a new school building was erected to educate the remaining children of the community; older schools at Lyles Station and nearby Sand Hill and Sugar Bluff were closed as part of a statewide trend towards school consolidation.[7] The school opened in 1919 and was an integrated school until 1922, when it became an all-black public school. (White students were enrolled at Baldwin Heights School in Patoka Township.) In 1928, the parents of 10 children at school, including Vertus Hardiman were approached by county hospital officials. The parents were told that there was a new treatment for dermatophytosis, a fungal infection commonly known as “ringworm.” What the parents didn’t know was that the children were actually part of a human experiment on extreme radiation, probably chosen because they lived in such an isolated location, and probably because they were all Black. The children were exposed to high levels and many were left with disfiguring scalp scars and head trauma. The effects of the experiments were mostly hidden from the townspeople of Lyles Station. Many of the children wore wigs and hats to cover up the results of the experiments

Lyles Stations's school was integrated once again in the 1950s; it closed in 1958 due to declining enrollment.[6] Following its formation in 1997, the Lyles Station Historic Preservation Corporation began plans to restore Lyles Consolidated School for use as a local heritage classroom, living history museum, and community center. The school was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1999. After decades of deterioration, fundraising efforts and additional grants provided the financial resources needed to restore the old building in 2003.[1][4][8]