Established here in 1869 as Oak Hill Industrial Academy by the Presbyterian Board of Missions, this boarding school served the children of Choctaw Freedmen. It succeeded a small school begun in 1860 by ex-slave and Presbyterian minister Charles W. Stewart to serve numerous black families who had settled here after the Civil War. The name changed in 1912 after David Elliott gave funds for a new dormitory in memory of his wife, Alice Lee. Students cleared and operated a large farm to help support the school, and hundreds of students trained there before it closed in 1936.