Monday,
April 29, 2004
Lincoln
University -- America's First Historically Black University --Celebrates
150th Anniversary at Gala Awards Reception at Sheraton New York
Hotel and Towers in New York City on May 6, 2004
Honorees are: Dr. Lee C. Bollinger, President of Columbia University;
Namibia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Lincoln University
Alumnus Hidipo Hamutenya; Actor Danny Glover; Africa America Institute;
Businessman Harold Doley, Jr., of Doley Securities; and Distinguished
Lincoln Alumni Dr. Edgar O. Mandeville '63 and Dr. W. Alexander
Miles '51.
Lincoln University,
located in Pennsylvania, will celebrate its 150th Anniversary
at a Gala Awards Reception at the Sheraton New York Hotel and
Towers, 811 Seventh Avenue in New York City, on May 6, 2004 at
6 p.m. Tickets to the 150th Anniversary Gala Awards Reception
are $250.
At the Gala
Awards Reception, the following honorees will be the first to
receive awards in the following categories:
“Since
we are at the dawn of the celebration of the 50th Anniversary
of Brown vs. Board of Education,” said Lincoln University
President Ivory V. Nelson, Ph.D., “we thought it was appropriate
to link the past with the present as we prepare for the future
by creating the Thurgood Marshall Award for Civil Rights out of
the tradition of the late Supreme Court Justice’s lifework
and present it to Dr. Bollinger, who personified that spirit of
racial justice by spearheading the University of Michigan’s
affirmative action case to the U. S. Supreme Court last year to
ensure that the dreams of young African Americans and other students
of color could be fulfilled. In this way, Thurgood Marshall’s
and Lincoln University’s legacy continues.”
“We
have extended this concept,” continued President Nelson,
“to include the Kwame Nkrumah Award for Outstanding Leadership
that will be given to Namibia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs
Hidipo Hamutenya, the Langston Hughes Award for the Arts to Actor
Danny Glover and the Horace Mann Bond Award for Education that
will be presented to the Africa America Institute as an institution.
At the same time, we are starting new traditions by instituting
the Lincoln University Award for Business to Harold Doley, Jr.
of Doley Securities and the Lincoln University Distinguished Alumni
Award to Dr. Mandeville and Dr. Miles.”
Actress Sheryl
Lee Ralph will be the Mistress of Ceremonies. Music will be provided
by Ray, Goodman and Brown, Harlem Renaissance Orchestra and The
Sound Choice. There will also be a silent auction and fashion
presentation.
“The
purpose of the event is to highlight the fact that Lincoln University
is a national treasure,” said Lincoln alumnus of the Class
of 1968 and Trustee Warren R. Colbert, Sr., CIMA, First Vice President-Investments,
UBS Financial Services Inc. and Chair of the 150th Anniversary
New York City Gala Awards Committee. “This is why we have
carefully selected who should receive our first awards named after
some of our very visible alumni. They reflect the kind of training
that over 2000 Lincoln alumni in the tri-state area have received.”
Lincoln has
the unprecedented distinction among all of the nation's colleges
of having two of its distinguished alumni honored with commemorative,
first-class mailing stamps by the U.S. Postal Service. U.S. Supreme
Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, class of 1930 and world-acclaimed
poet Langston Hughes, class of 1929, were honored in January 2003
and February 2002, respectively.
Lincoln University
was founded by Presbyterians in 1854 as the nation’s first
Historically Black University in the midst of the Abolition movement
spearheaded by the Quakers in Pennsylvania. Its mandate at that
time was to create an institution to provide higher education
for Black males. (The institution became coeducational in 1952.)
Currently, there are approximately 112 Historically Black Colleges
and Universities (HBCU) across the nation.
Being the
first institution of higher learning for people of color in the
segregated America of the pre-Civil War era, Lincoln had to fulfill
the dual role of serving as the intellectual safe haven for the
nurturing of new ideas, strategies and skills for its students
while adjusting its curriculum to prepare its students for their
role in a future world that Lincoln University and its eventual
“underground railroad” type of relationship with fellow
HCBU’s were creating through the ramifications of the Civil
War, Jim Crow Era, the Civil Rights Movement, the Independence
Movement in Africa and the Global Information Society.
The resulting
list of “firsts” that Lincoln University has accomplished
institutionally and through its graduates underscores its leadership
role in conceptualizing and implementing major new initiatives
worldwide. Among the more visible graduates of Lincoln University
including the late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall ’30
are: poet and playwright Langston Hughes ’29; the founder
of the Independence Movement in Africa and first President of
Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah ‘39; the first president of Nigeria,
the late Nnamdi Azikiwe ’30; the first African American bishop
of the United Methodist Church, Roy C. Nichols ’41; and the
first African American female rear admiral in the U.S. Navy, Lillian
Fishburne ’71.
As an institution,
Lincoln University graduates have created other institutions including:
