Loveless Academic Magnet Program or LAMP for short is named after Henry Allen Loveless. Here is information about his amazing life.

Henry Allen Loveless

Montgomery Portraits

Loveless Inspiring Example

By Jeff Benton

February 24, 2011

Henry Allen Loveless (1854-1921) was born into slavery in Bullock County. Ten years old at the end of the Civil War, Loveless was kept for five years by his former master as an unpaid laborer. This situation was not unusual as the South struggled to establish a new agricultural labor system to replace slavery. The market economy of tobacco, rice, cotton, and sugar had collapsed. Mere subsistence agriculture was all that could be hoped for in the famine years following the Civil War. Until the establishment of the crop-lien system (sharecropping), the contract-labor system provided labor for landowners and work for former slaves. In an almost cashless economy that predominantly depended on barter, it was not surprising that labor was paid in kind, rather than in cash. Former masters and former slaves continued to depend on one another. Yet both agricultural labor systems were not only inherently unfair to labor, but they also provided landowners opportunities to cheat labor as well. 

After the war, some freedmen stayed with their former masters, but others flooded the towns, creating untenable situations. Former slaves who had been farm laborers lacked economic skills to survive in the towns, especially when the economy was in shambles. Many towns, including Montgomery, tried unsuccessfully to keep former field hands out. 

Some former slaves had such drive that economic chaos was an opportunity rather than an insurmountable obstacle. Henry Loveless was such a man. Moving to Montgomery when he was 18, he working during the day for small wages and attended classes at night. Freedmen eagerly sought to learn to read and write, skills they had been forbidden to acquire as slaves. Only in the towns was the Freedmen's Bureau able to provide food relief and educational opportunities (for whites as well as blacks). Not only did Loveless work and attend school, but in 1875 he married Lucy Arrington. 

Like so many entrepreneurs, especially African Americans in the decades following the Civil War, Loveless built his fortune on a number of businesses, rather than on one enterprise. After saving a small amount, he set himself up as a butcher and then as an undertaker. He expanded these business pursuits to include a delivery service, horse and buggy rental, and a coal yard and wood yard. 

From his establishment in the heart of the black business district on North Perry Street, and later on North Court Street, he also ran a sand and gravel business. By 1895, he employed 25 workers and had a daily payroll of $25; in that year, 25 years after coming to Montgomery, he was worth more than $15,000. 

Based on his success in business, Loveless became a force in Montgomery's black community. In 1877, he was a founding member of the Second Colored Baptist Church (now Dexter Avenue King Memorial) when it split from the Columbus Street Baptist Church (now First Baptist, Ripley Street). Although opposed by some in the white community, he purchased the land for the church "in the shadow of the Capitol" and then served as chairman of the building committee. 

Subsequently, he served the church as deacon, treasurer and trustee. Loveless also served on the board of directors of Swayne School, which the American Missionary Association and the Freedmen's Bureau founded in 1872. This school, like similar ones throughout the South, was established as a missionary effort to provide the minimal schooling necessary to prepare former slaves to be citizens. 

In time, Loveless, who was respected by the entire community for his faith, character, enterprise and charity to the poor, was an inspiration to all, but especially to poor young blacks. It was appropriate that the black grade school that opened in 1923, just two years after Loveless' death, was named for such a substantial citizen. By 1937, the school had all 12 grades, and in 1999 it became the home of LAMP, Montgomery's most academically challenging high school program.