Lincoln University history

The Ashmun Institute was opened to students on January 1, 1857, with four students enrolled.

However, the Ashmun Institute graduated its first class in 1859, more than 60 years before Cheyney University would become a college.

On January 14, 1866, Lincoln Institute was formally established under an organization committee.

White students were encouraged to enroll and two graduated in the first baccalaureate class of six men in 1868.

In 1870, the school began to receive aid from the state of Missouri for teacher training.

Lincoln Institute formally became a state institution in 1879 with the deeding of the property to the state.

Under the second Morrill Act of 1890, Lincoln became a land grant institution, and the following year industrial and agricultural courses were added to the curriculum.

While Cheyney University may have been around longer, The Lincoln University was the first to provide college-level education to African Americans, as the Institute for Colored Youth only offered a high school education until the 1920s.

In 1921, the Missouri Legislature passed a bill introduced by Walthall M. Moore, the first black American to serve in that body, which changed the name from Lincoln Institute to Lincoln University and created a Board of Curators to govern the University.

"The first institution found anywhere in the world to provide a higher education in the arts and sciences for male youth of African descent,” described Horace Mann Bond (class of 1923), Lincoln’s first African American president, in his book, Education for Freedom.

Thurgood Marshall, the first African American United States Supreme Court Justice graduated just a year later, in 1930.

Graduate instruction was begun in the summer session of 1940, with majors in education and history and minors in English, history, and sociology.

A School of Journalism was established in February 1942.

In 1945 Doctor Horace Mann Bond, an alumnus of Lincoln, was selected as the first African-American president of the university.

Lewis, Thomas E. "Lincoln University—The World's First Negro School of Higher Learning." Philadelphia Bulletin (August 26, 1951): 3.

Lincoln began accepting female students in 1952.

The university celebrated its 100th anniversary by amending its charter in 1953 to permit the granting of degrees to women.

In 1998, Lincoln University received $11 million in state appropriations, representing one-third of the university’s budget.

Lincoln University currently ranks #27 out of 81 on the 2009 United States News and World Report ranking of undergraduate education at HBCUs.

24 February 2014. <http://cubstolions.com/the-lincoln-university-unveils-new-athletics-logo-branding>.

On May 11, 2017, the Lincoln University board of trustees announced the appointment of Doctor Brenda A. Allen, provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs at Winston-Salem State University as Lincoln's new president.