About Lincoln
A Legacy of Producing Leaders
Lincoln
University
of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania was chartered in April 1854
as Ashmun Institute. As Horace Mann Bond, '23, the eighth president
of Lincoln University, so eloquently cites in the opening chapter
of his book, Education for Freedom, this was "the first
institution found anywhere in the world to provide a higher education
in the arts and sciences for male youth of African descent."
The story of Lincoln University goes back to the early years of
the 19th century and to the ancestors of its founder,
John Miller Dickey, and his wife, Sarah Emlen Cresson. The Institute
was renamed Lincoln University in 1866 after President Abraham
Lincoln.
Lincoln is surrounded by the rolling
farmlands and wooded hilltops of southern Chester County, Pennsylvania.
Its campus is conveniently located on Baltimore Pike, about one
mile off US Route 1 – 45 miles southwest of Philadelphia, 15
miles northwest of Newark, Delaware, 25 miles west of Wilmington,
Delaware, and 55 miles north of Baltimore, Maryland.
Since
its inception, Lincoln has attracted an interracial and international
enrollment from the surrounding community, region, and around the
world. The University admitted women students in 1952, and formally
associated with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in 1972 as a state-related,
coeducational university. Lincoln currently enrolls approximately
2,000 students.
Located
in southern Chester County, Lincoln is accredited by the Middle
States Association of Colleges and Schools and offers academic programs
in undergraduate study in the arts, sciences as well as graduate
programs in human services, reading, education, mathematics, and
administration. The University is proud of its faculty for the high
quality of their teaching, research, and service, and of its alumni,
among the most notable of whom are: Langston
Hughes, '29, world-acclaimed poet; Thurgood
Marshall, '30, first African-American Justice of the
US Supreme Court; Hildrus
A. Poindexter, '24, internationally known authority
on tropical diseases; Roscoe
Lee Browne, '46, author and widely acclaimed actor
of stage and screen; Jacqueline Allen, '74, judge
for the Court of Common Pleas, Philadelphia; and Eric C.
Webb, '91, author, poet and editor-in-chief of Souls
of People.
Many of Lincoln's international
graduates have gone on to become outstanding leaders in their countries,
including Nnamdi Azikiwe, '30, Nigeria's first
president; Kwame Nkrumah, '39, first president
of Ghana; Rev. James Robinson, '35, founder of
Crossroads Africa, which served as the model for the Peace Corps;
and Sibusio Nkomo, Ph.D., '81, chairperson, National
Policy Institute of South Africa.
During the first one hundred years
of its existence, Lincoln graduated approximately 20 percent of
the Black physicians and more than 10 percent of the Black attorneys
in the United States. Its alumni have headed over 35 colleges and
universities and scores of prominent churches. At least 10 of its
alumni have served as United States ambassadors or mission chiefs.
Many are federal, state and municipal judges, and several have served
as mayors or city managers.
