Lincoln University (Pennsylvania)
Lincoln University in Lower Oxford Township, Pennsylvania, can point to two graduates who earned places on United States commemorative stamps. One became a justice of the Supreme Court. The other became a celebrated poet of the Harlem Renaissance.
The school sits in southern Chester County, and it carries a distinction that surprises many newcomers. It is recognized as the first college-degree-granting historically black university in the country.
Who set the school up, and what did they hope to achieve? Why did a famous physicist and two presidents of the United States travel out to speak there? And how did a world-famous art collection put this small university at the center of a legal fight?
John Miller Dickey, a Presbyterian minister, and his wife, Sarah Emlen Cresson, a Quaker, founded a school in Hinsonville, Pennsylvania, in 1854. They named it Ashmun Institute, after Jehudi Ashmun, a religious leader and social reformer. Their purpose was to educate African Americans, who had very few opportunities for higher education.
Dickey served as the first president, from 1854 to 1856. John Pym Carter took over after him, and John Wynne Martin followed Carter in 1861.
Three of Dickey's earliest students were James Ralston Amos, his brother Thomas Henry Amos, and Armistead Hutchinson Miller. James lived from 1826 to 1864, Thomas from 1825 to 1869, and Armistead from about 1829 or 1830 to 1865. Dickey encouraged all three to support the creation of Liberia as a colony for African Americans. Each of them became an ordained minister.
In 1866, a year after the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, the school was renamed Lincoln University. It attracted highly talented students from numerous states, especially during the decades of legal segregation in the American South. Many of its alumni built careers in academia, public service, and the arts.
Isaac Norton Rendall had already become president in 1865, and he would hold the office until 1906.
In 1910, President William Howard Taft gave the commencement address at Lincoln. The visit showed that the school had a national reputation within its first six decades.
In June 1921, only days after the Tulsa race massacre, President Warren Harding came to deliver the commencement address. He spoke about the need to seek healing and harmony after that event. He also honored the Lincoln alumni who were among the 367,000 African-American servicemen who fought in World War I. The school newspaper called the visit "the high water mark in the history of the institution."
That same year, Harding dedicated the Alumni Memorial Arch at the entrance to the university. The arch honors the Lincoln men who served in World War I and remains one of the most visible landmarks on campus.
In 1945, Horace Mann Bond became the first African-American president of the university. He was an alumnus of the school himself, and he served for twelve years.
In 1946, Albert Einstein visited to give a lecture on physics. Racial dynamics at the time were harsh, and Einstein chose to speak about racism as well. A 2017 episode of the television series Genius, which dramatizes his life, depicted the visit.
Between 1854 and 1954, Lincoln graduates accounted for 20% of African American physicians in the United States. Over the same hundred years, they made up more than 10% of African American lawyers.
Thurgood Marshall graduated in the class of 1930. He directed the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund in groundbreaking cases, and he became the first African American appointed as a justice of the US Supreme Court. Langston Hughes, who graduated in 1929, became a renowned poet of the Harlem Renaissance.
Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of Ghana, studied at Lincoln. So did Nnamdi Azikiwe, the first president of Nigeria. Two nations at the end of colonial rule turned to graduates of a small Pennsylvania school for their first leaders.
Christian Fleetwood received the Medal of Honor and became a pioneering African-American editor. Horace Dawson served as United States Ambassador to Botswana. Frederick D. Alexander was a civil rights activist, and Conrad Tillard became a politician, Baptist minister, radio host, author, and activist. Sheila Oliver became lieutenant governor of New Jersey, Joseph Newman Clinton sat in the Florida House of Representatives, and Luis Ernesto Ramos Yordán served in the House of Representatives for Puerto Rico.
Gil Scott-Heron, a song artist and activist, studied at Lincoln. Roscoe Lee Browne became an Emmy Award-winning and Tony Award-nominated actor. Robert Walter Johnson coached the tennis players Althea Gibson and Arthur Ashe. Melvin B. Tolson taught and coached the Wiley College debate team of Marshall, Texas, which the film The Great Debaters portrays.
Thomas E. Miller founded South Carolina State University, and Joseph Charles Price founded Livingstone College. Joseph Winthrop Holley started Albany State University, William Decker Johnson started Allen University, and Raphael O'Hara Lanier started Texas Southern University. Abroad, Ibanga Akpabio founded Ibibio State College in Nigeria, and King Osei Tutu founded the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Ghana. All of them were Lincoln alumni.
The children of Lincoln alumni also reached prominence. They include the bandleader Cab Calloway, the choral director Hall Johnson, the activist Julian Bond, and the singer, actor, and activist Paul Robeson. Wes Moore, the Governor of Maryland, belongs to the list, as do the lawyer and Episcopal priest Pauli Murray and the lawyer and educator Sadie T. M. Alexander. The poet and playwright Angelina Weld Grimké is named, along with the actors Malcolm-Jamal Warner and Leslie Uggams and the actress Wendy Williams.
The staff list is just as varied. Fritz Pollard coached football from 1918 to 1920 and later became the first African-American NFL coach. The activist James Farmer, the historian Philip S. Foner, and the political scientist Charles V. Hamilton all worked there. John Aubrey Davis, Sr. taught political science from 1949 to 1953, and Irv Mondschein coached track, basketball, and football. Doug Overton, a former NBA point guard, led the men's basketball team as head coach from 2016 to 2020.
The main campus covers 422 acres and holds 56 buildings totaling over one million gross square feet. It counts as a census-designated place for statistical purposes, and the 2010 census recorded 1,726 residents.
Fifteen residence halls house over 1,600 students. Alumni Hall dates to 1870 and Amos Hall to 1902. In 2005, the university added 400 beds in coed, apartment-style suites. Off-campus housing includes Thorn Flats in Newark, Delaware.
The four-story Ivory V. Nelson Science Center and General Classroom High Technology Building was completed in 2008. It covers 150,000 square feet and bears the name of Ivory V. Nelson, who was president from 1999 to 2011. The International Cultural Center, at 60,000 square feet, followed in 2010. The Health and Wellness Center opened in 2012 with 105,000 square feet. A football stadium also stands on campus, and the whole campus was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2022.
The Vail Memorial Library served as the first physical library building at Lincoln. When Langston Hughes died in 1967, he left the contents of his personal library to the university. That bequest outgrew the building. Construction of a larger one was underway in 1970, and the Langston Hughes Memorial Library opened in 1972. Its holdings include over 185,000 volumes, plus databases with more than 30,000 journal titles, periodicals, eBooks, and media offerings.
The renovated Student Union Building houses the bookstore, a cafe, two television studios, a radio studio, postal services, and multipurpose rooms. The Thurgood Marshall Living Learning Center works with the union as the center of campus social and meeting activities.
A six-story building in the University City section of Philadelphia serves as the university's second location. It offers select undergraduate and graduate programs through the School of Adult and Continuing Education.
During his presidency from 1945 to 1957, Horace Mann Bond formed a friendship with Albert C. Barnes, the philanthropist and art collector who established the Barnes Foundation. Barnes took a special interest in Lincoln and built a relationship with its students. He gave the university the privilege of naming four of the five directors originally set for the foundation's governing board.
Barnes wanted to help under-served youth and populations. He intended his art collection, valued at approximately twenty-five billion dollars, to serve mainly as a teaching resource. He limited the number of people who could see it, and for years he even limited the kinds of people. Students and working-class visitors were preferred. Visitors still need appointments, and only a limited number may enter the galleries at one time.
The collection was kept at 300 North Latch's Lane in Merion, Pennsylvania, a residential neighborhood. In the mid-20th century, the local government restricted traffic to the campus there. Barnes's constraints, local factors, and management problems pushed the foundation close to bankruptcy by the 1990s.
Supporters began to look at moving the collection to a more public location and keeping it to museum standards. To pay for renovations on the main building, the foundation sent some of its most famous impressionist and modern paintings on tour.
In 2002, Pennsylvania Attorney General D. Michael Fisher contested Barnes's will. He argued that the Merion location and the small board limited the foundation's ability to support itself financially. In 2005, Governor Edward Rendell brokered a settlement between the Barnes Foundation and Lincoln University. The agreement increased the number of directors, which diluted Lincoln's influence over the collection.
The documentary The Art of the Steal depicts these events.
In 1953, Lincoln amended its charter to permit degrees for women. True coeducation arrived slowly, and women made up only 5% of the student body in 1964. By 2019, they were 66% of undergraduate enrollment.
In 1972, Lincoln formally associated with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania as a state-related institution. Today it teaches approximately 2,000 undergraduate and graduate students and belongs to the Thurgood Marshall College Fund. A majority of the students are African American, but the university has a long record of admitting students of other races and nationalities.
More than 60 student organizations serve interests that include fashion, arts, social justice, religion, international affairs, culture, service, leisure, media, and publishing. Fraternities and sororities are numerous. The student newspaper is The Lincolnian, and the yearbook is The Lion. WWLU is the campus radio station, and LUC-TV is the campus television station.
The Lincoln Lions compete in NCAA Division II, in the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association and the Eastern College Athletic Conference. Teams play baseball, softball, football, and women's soccer and volleyball. Men's and women's teams compete in basketball, indoor track, outdoor track, and cross-country.
U.S. News and World Report ranked Lincoln number 19 among historically black colleges and universities in 2020. In the same year, its Best Colleges report rated Lincoln 119 among Regional Universities North. The Lincoln-Barnes Visual Arts program, a collaboration with the Barnes Foundation, leads to a Bachelor of Fine Arts. A Pan-Africana Studies major was added most recently to the undergraduate offerings.
In October 2014, faculty and the alumni association held no-confidence votes in President Robert R. Jennings, in a couple of separate actions. In November 2014, he resigned under pressure from faculty, students, and alumni after comments he made about sexual assault. Valerie I. Harrison served as acting president from 2014 to 2015, and Richard Green served as interim president until 2017.
In 2017, Brenda A. Allen became president. She had graduated from Lincoln in 1981.
In 2020, MacKenzie Scott gave the university $20 million, the second largest single gift in its history.
On the 25th of October 2025, during homecoming weekend, a shooting at the university killed one person and injured six others. It is believed that there were multiple shooters. One man was arrested and charged, with bail set at $1 million.
In December 2025, MacKenzie Scott gave a further $25 million. That gift is the largest single donation in Lincoln's history.
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Common questions
What is Lincoln University in Pennsylvania?
Lincoln University is a public, state-related historically black university in Lower Oxford Township, Pennsylvania. It is recognized as the first college-degree-granting historically black university in the country and teaches approximately 2,000 students.
When was Lincoln University in Pennsylvania founded and by whom?
John Miller Dickey, a Presbyterian minister, and his wife, Sarah Emlen Cresson, a Quaker, founded it in 1854 as Ashmun Institute in Hinsonville, Pennsylvania. It was renamed Lincoln University in 1866.
Who are the famous alumni of Lincoln University in Pennsylvania?
Famous alumni include Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, the poet Langston Hughes, Ghana's first president Kwame Nkrumah, and Nigeria's first president Nnamdi Azikiwe. Marshall and Hughes both appear on United States commemorative stamps.
What is the connection between Lincoln University and the Barnes Foundation?
Albert C. Barnes gave Lincoln University the privilege of naming four of the five original directors of the Barnes Foundation. A settlement brokered in 2005 increased the number of directors, which diluted Lincoln's influence over the collection.
When did Lincoln University begin granting degrees to women?
Lincoln University amended its charter in 1953 to permit degrees for women. Women made up only 5% of the student body in 1964 and 66% of undergraduate enrollment in 2019.
How large is the Lincoln University campus in Pennsylvania?
The main campus covers 422 acres in southern Chester County and has 56 buildings totaling over one million gross square feet. The campus was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2022.
All sources
38 references cited across the entry
- 1University FactsLincoln University
- 3PHMC Historical Markers SearchCommonwealth of Pennsylvania
- 7BookOn Africa's Lands: The Forgotten Stories of Two Lincoln Educated Missionaries in LiberiaCheryl Renee Gooch — The Lincoln University Press — 2014
- 8BookThe bully pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of journalismDoris Kearns Goodwin — Simon & Schuster — 2013
- 10Horace Mann Bond (1904-1972)February 12, 2007
- 12BookBlack Heritage Sites: An African American Odyssey and Finder's Guide - Lincoln UniversityNancy C. Curtis — American Library Association — 1996
- 13BookGoing Coed: Women's Experiences in Formerly Men's Colleges and Universities, 1950-2000Leslie Miller-Bernal et al. — Vanderbilt University Press — 2004
- 14BookNotable Black American womenGail Research — 1992
- 15Lincoln University president resigns amid furor over sex-assault remarksSOLOMON LEACH — November 25, 2014
- 16A no-confidence vote for Lincoln University's presidentSusan Snyder — October 26, 2014
- 17Brenda Allen Named New President of Lincoln UniversityJohn N. Mitchell — Philadelphia Tribune — May 17, 2017
- 18Lincoln University receives $20 million gift as part of $4 billion giveaway by ex-wife of Amazon founderSusan Snyder — December 15, 2020
- 22Lincoln University Receives $25M Gift from Mackenzie ScottDecember 5, 2025
- 29College Scorecard: Lincoln UniversityUnited States Department of Education
- 33NewsBarnes $25 Billion Art Trove, Boardroom Fight Drive Documentarybloomberg.com — February 26, 2010
- 34Black Heritage Stamp SeriesThe United States Postal Service
- 38NewsThe Deal of the ArtPatricia Horn — 22 May 2005