Edited by Gerald Boerner
Commentary:
The Ashmun Institute was the first of a group of historically colleges and universities for African American students. This school was later renamed Lincoln Institute; later yet it became Lincoln University and was part of the University of Pennsylvania system. These schools were designed to provide African Americans educational opportunities denied the in the segregated south.
Other noteworthy examples from this group include Bethune-Cookman University and the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute (later Tuskegee University). These schools have provided this country’s African American youth with an integrated education in the arts and scientists.
Lincoln University (LU) is the United States’ first degree-granting historically black university. It is located near the town of Oxford in southern Chester County, Pennsylvania. The university also hosts a Center for Graduate Studies in the City of Philadelphia. Lincoln University provides undergraduate and graduate coursework to approximately 2,500 students. As former president Dr. Horace Mann Bond noted in his book Education for Freedom: A History of Lincoln University, Pennsylvania, with the college’s founding in 1854, "This was the first institution founded anywhere in the world to provide a higher education in the arts and sciences for youth of African descent."
Lincoln University has an impressive list of notable alumni which includes: U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Thurgood Marshall; Harlem Renaissance poet, Langston Hughes; musical legend, Cab Calloway; the first President of Nigeria, Nnamdi Azikiwe; the first President of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah; song artist and activist, Gil Scott-Heron; Tony Award winning actor, Roscoe Lee Browne; and architect of the debate team portrayed in the film, The Great Debaters, Melvin B. Tolson.
We should be proud of these schools and continue to provide support. So, let’s get started on today’s exploration… GLB
These Introductory Comments are copyrighted:
Copyright©2011 — Gerald Boerner — All Rights Reserved[ 3590 Words ]
Quotations Related to RIC KELLER:
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Ashmun Institute: First College for African American Students…
Lincoln University (LU) is the United States’ first degree-granting historically black university. It is located near the town of Oxford in southern Chester County, Pennsylvania. The university also hosts a Center for Graduate Studies in the City of Philadelphia. Lincoln University provides undergraduate and graduate coursework to approximately 2,500 students. As former president Dr. Horace Mann Bond noted in his book Education for Freedom: A History of Lincoln University, Pennsylvania, with the college’s founding in 1854, "This was the first institution founded anywhere in the world to provide a higher education in the arts and sciences for youth of African descent."
Lincoln University has an impressive list of notable alumni which includes: U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Thurgood Marshall; Harlem Renaissance poet, Langston Hughes; musical legend, Cab Calloway; the first President of Nigeria, Nnamdi Azikiwe; the first President of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah; song artist and activist, Gil Scott-Heron; Tony Award winning actor, Roscoe Lee Browne; and architect of the debate team portrayed in the film, The Great Debaters, Melvin B. Tolson.
Today, Lincoln University provides a liberal arts and science-based undergraduate core curriculum and select graduate programs to prepare students of every race and nationality. As of 2010, 18% of the student body was white (caucasian). Lincoln is a "state-related" university, meaning it receives public funds and offers reduced tuition for Pennsylvania residents but is under independent control.
History of Ashmun Institute (Lincoln University)
In 1854 Rev. John Miller Dickey, a Presbyterian minister, and his wife, Sarah Emlen Cresson, a Quaker, founded Ashmun Institute, later named Lincoln University. They named it after Jehudi Ashmun, a religious leader and social reformer. They founded the school for the education of African Americans, who had few opportunities for higher education.
John Miller Dickey was the first president of the college. He encouraged some of his first students: James Ralston Amos (1826-1864), his brother Thomas Henry Amos (1825-1869), and Armistead Hutchinson Miller (1829/30-1865), to support the establishment of Liberia as a colony for African Americans. Each of the men became ordained ministers.
In 1866, Ashmun Institute was renamed Lincoln University after the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.
The college attracted highly talented students from numerous states, especially during the long decades of legal segregation in the South. As may be seen on the list of notable alumni (link below), many went on to achievements in careers in academia, public service, the arts and many other fields.
In 1945 Dr. Horace Mann Bond, an alumnus of Lincoln, was selected as the first African-American president of the university. During his 12-year tenure, he continued to do social science research, and helped support the important civil rights case of Brown v. Board of Education, decided in 1954 by the US Supreme Court. He established an important relationship with the collector Albert C. Barnes, who ensured Lincoln University had a role in the management of his art collection, the Barnes Foundation.
In 1972 Lincoln University formally associated with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania as a state-related institution.
From 1854 to 1954, Lincoln University graduates accounted for 20 percent of Black physicians and over 10 percent of Black lawyers in the United States.
Academics
According to U.S. News & World Report, Lincoln University ranks number 27th out of 81 in the 2009 magazine’s first ranking of undergraduate education at HBCUs. It is ranked as a Tier One school on the list. Lincoln University shares its #27 ranking with Oakwood University and the University of Maryland Eastern Shore.
Lincoln University’s "International and Study Abroad Program" had student participation in Service Learning Projects in the countries of Ecuador, Argentina, Spain, Ireland, Costa Rica, Japan, France, Cambodia, Zambia, Liberia, Ghana, Kenya, Russia, Australia, Thailand, the Czech Republic, Mexico, and South Africa.
The new Lincoln-Barnes Visual Arts program is a collaboration between Lincoln University and the Barnes Foundation. It established a Visual Arts program that leads to a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts.
Lincoln University offers 37 undergraduate majors, 22 undergraduate minors, and 5 Pre-Professional (Dentistry, Engineering, Law, Medicine, and Veterinary Science) programs.
Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs)
There are 105 historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) in the United States today, including public and private, two-year and four-year institutions, medical schools and community colleges. All are or were in the former slave states and territories of the U.S. except for Central State University (Ohio), Cheyney University of Pennsylvania, Lewis College of Business (Detroit, Michigan), Lincoln University (Pennsylvania), Wilberforce University (Ohio), and now-defunct Western University (Kansas). Some closed during the 20th century due to competition, the Great Depression and financial difficulties after operating for decades.
Most HBCUs were established after the American Civil War. However, Cheyney University of Pennsylvania, established in 1837, Lincoln University (Pennsylvania), established in 1854, and Wilberforce University, established in 1856, were established for blacks prior to the American Civil War.
The Higher Education Act of 1965, as amended, defines a "part B institution" as: "…any historically black college or university that was established prior to 1964, whose principal mission was, and is, the education of black Americans, and that is accredited by a nationally recognized accrediting agency or association determined by the Secretary [of Education] to be a reliable authority as to the quality of training offered or is, according to such an agency or association, making reasonable progress toward accreditation." Part B of the 1965 Act provides for direct federal aid to Part B institutions.
In 1863, the Morrill Act provided for land grant colleges in each state. Some educational institutions in the North or West were open to blacks since the Civil War. However, 17 states, mostly in the South, generally excluded blacks from their land grant colleges. In response, the second Morrill Act of 1890 was passed to require states to establish a separate land grant college for blacks if blacks were being excluded from the then existing land grant college. Many of the HBCUs were founded in response to the Second Morrill Act. These land grant schools continue to receive annual federal funding for their research, extension and outreach activities. The Higher Education Act of 1965 established a program for direct federal grants to HBCUs, including federal matching of private endowment contributions.
Other educational institutions currently have large numbers of blacks in their student body, but as they were founded (or opened their doors to African Americans) after the implementation of the Sweatt v. Painter and Brown v. Board of Education rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court (the court decisions which outlawed racial segregation of public education facilities) and the Higher Education Act of 1965, they are not historically black colleges, but have been termed "predominantly black."
Starting in 2001, the libraries of several HBCUs began a conversation about ways to pool their resources and work collaboratively. In 2003, this partnership was formalized as the HBCU Library Alliance, "a consortium that supports the collaboration of information professionals dedicated to providing an array of resources designed to strengthen historically black colleges and Universities and their constituents."
Current Status
In 2004, the US Department of Education published a study of HBCUs that found that, as of 2001, HBCUs accounted for 13% of black higher education enrollment.
In 2007, the Thurgood Marshall College Fund published a study of minority recruiting practices by Fortune 400 companies and by government agencies that found that 13% of the college graduates were recruited from HBCUs and 87% were recruited from non-HBCU schools.
The 2009 Stimulus Bill included more than $1.3 billion of additional federal support for HBCU campuses.
Of the 105 HBCU institutions in America today, 27 offer doctoral programs and 52 provide graduate degree programs at the Master’s level. At the undergraduate level, 83 of the HBCUs offer a Bachelor’s degree program and 38 of these schools offer associate degrees.
The portion of Bachelor degrees awarded to black students by HBCUs has steadily dropped from 35% in 1976 to 21.5% in 2001. From 1976 to 2001, total HBCU enrollment grew from 180,059 to 222,453, with most of this increase being attributable to the growth of female black enrollment from 88,379 to 117,766.
In 1975, Jake Ayers Sr. filed a lawsuit against Mississippi for giving more financial support to its predominantly white public colleges. The state settled the lawsuit in 2002 and agreed to direct $503 million to three historically black colleges, collectively, over 17 years.[13]
Following the enactment of Civil Rights laws in the 1960s, all educational institutions that receive federal funding have undertaken affirmative action to increase their racial diversity. Some historically black colleges now have non-black majorities, notably West Virginia State University and Bluefield State College whose student body has been over 80% white since the mid-1960s. Many non-state-supported HBCUs are struggling financially, due to the increased cost of delivering private education to students and declining financial aid for students.
Racial Diversity at HBCUs
As colleges work harder to maintain enrollment levels and because of increased racial harmony and the low cost of tuition, the percentage of non-African American enrollment has tended to climb.
Lincoln University Campus
Lincoln University main campus is 422 acres (1.71 km2) with 56 buildings totaling over one million gross square feet. There are fifteen residence halls that accommodate over 1,600 students. The dormitories range from small dorms such as Alumni Hall, built in 1870; and Amos Hall, built in 1902, to the new coed 400-bed apartment-style living (ASL) suites built in 2005. A $40.5 million, four-story, 150,000-square-foot (14,000 m2) Science and General Classroom High Technology Building completed in December 2008. A $26.1 million 60,000-square-foot (5,600 m2) International Cultural Center construction began on April 10, 2008, that is also now completed.
One of the most visible landmarks on campus is the Alumni Memorial Arch, located at the entrance to the university. The arch was dedicated by President Warren G. Harding in 1921 to the Lincoln men who served in World War I. The Mary Dod Brown Memorial Chapel is the center for campus religious activities. This Gothic structure was built in 1890 and contains a 300-seat main auditorium and a 200-seat fellowship hall.
Vail Memorial Hall, built in 1899 and expanded in 1954, served as the library until 1972. The facility houses executive administrative offices including the President, Vice Presidents, and other staff.
The Langston Hughes Memorial Library (LHML), named after the famous alumnus, houses more than 176,000 volumes, and subscribes to more than 600 current periodicals annually. A substantial number of the library’s periodicals are on microfilm and can be accessed electronically through the school’s website. LHML is equipped with the JSTOR database for online academic proprietary research tools. JSTOR includes archives of over one thousand leading academic journals across multiple disciplines, as well as selected monographs. A separate section of the library contains special African-American collections. This includes the personal papers and artifacts of renowned poet Langston Hughes (class of 1929).
The completely renovated Student Union Building contains the bookstore, café, two new television studios and a radio studio, postal services, and multipurpose rooms. The Thurgood Marshall Living Learning Center, along with the Student Union Building, are the centers for campus social and meeting activities. Marshall graduated in the class of 1930, directed the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund in groundbreaking cases, and became the first African American appointed as justice to US Supreme Court.
Manuel Rivero Hall is the athletic and recreation center at Lincoln University. The main gymnasium seats 2,500 for athletic and convocation activities. A separate full size auxiliary gymnasium, Olympic-size swimming pool, training room facilities, wrestling room, and eight lane bowling alley are contained in this facility.
Lincoln University Plaza, a six-story building in the University City section of Philadelphia, houses the Graduate Center.
Notable Supporters and Graduates
Thurgood Marshall (July 2, 1908 – January 24, 1993) was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, serving from October, 1967 until October, 1991. Marshall was the Court’s 96th justice and its first African American justice.
Before becoming a judge, Marshall was a lawyer who was best remembered for his high success rate in arguing before the Supreme Court and for the victory in Brown v. Board of Education. He argued more cases before the United States Supreme Court than anyone else in history. He served on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit after being appointed by President John F. Kennedy and then served as the Solicitor General after being appointed by President Lyndon Johnson in 1965. President Johnson nominated him to the United States Supreme Court in 1967.
He spent his tenure on the highest court in the land establishing a record for supporting the voiceless American. He began his early career fighting to dismantle racial segregation and as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, Thurgood Marshall left a legacy that expands that early sensitivity to include all of America’s voiceless.
Marshall set up a private practice in Baltimore in 1936. That year, he began working with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Baltimore.
He won his first major civil rights case, Murray v. Pearson, 169 Md. 478 (1936). This was the first challenge of the "separate but equal" doctrine that was part of the Plessy v. Ferguson decision. His co-counsel on the case, Charles Hamilton Houston, developed the strategy. Marshall represented Donald Gaines Murray, a black Amherst College graduate with excellent credentials, who had been denied admission to the University of Maryland Law School because of its segregation policy. Black students in Maryland wanting to study law had to accept one of three options, attend: Morgan College, the Princess Anne Academy, or out-of-state black institutions.
In 1935, Thurgood Marshall argued the case for Murray, showing that neither of the in-state institutions offered a law school and that such schools were entirely unequal in quality to the University of Maryland. Marshall and Houston expected to lose and intended to appeal to the federal courts. The Maryland Court of Appeals ruled against the state of Maryland and its Attorney General, who represented the University of Maryland, stating, "Compliance with the Constitution cannot be deferred at the will of the state. Whatever system is adopted for legal education must furnish equality of treatment now." While it was a moral victory, the state court’s ruling had no authority outside of Maryland.
James Mercer Langston Hughes (February 1, 1902 – May 22, 1967) was an American poet, novelist, playwright, and columnist. He was one of the earliest innovators of the new literary art form jazz poetry. Hughes is best-known for his work during the Harlem Renaissance. He famously wrote about the period that "Harlem was in vogue".
Hughes worked various odd jobs, before serving a brief tenure as a crewman aboard the S.S. Malone in 1923, spending six months traveling to West Africa and Europe. In Europe, Hughes left the S.S. Malone for a temporary stay in Paris.
During his time in England in the early 1920s, Hughes became part of the black expatriate community. In November 1924, Hughes returned to the U. S. to live with his mother in Washington, D.C. Hughes worked at various odd jobs before gaining a white-collar job in 1925 as a personal assistant to the historian Carter G. Woodson at the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. As the work demands limited his time for writing, Hughes quit the position to work as a busboy in a hotel. There he encountered the poet Vachel Lindsay, with whom he shared some poems. Impressed with the poems, Lindsay publicized his discovery of a new black poet. By this time, Hughes’s earlier work had been published in magazines and was about to be collected into his first book of poetry.
The following year, Hughes enrolled in Lincoln University, a historically black university in Chester County, Pennsylvania. He joined the Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, a black fraternal organization founded at Howard University in Washington, D.C. Thurgood Marshall, who later became an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, was an alumnus and classmate of Langston Hughes during his undergraduate studies at Lincoln University.
Please take time to further explore more about Lincoln University
(Pennsylvania), Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Thurgood
Marshall, Langston Hughes, Ashmun Institute, and Horace Mann Bond
by accessing the Wikipedia articles referenced below. In most cases,
the text in the body of this post has been selectively excerpted from
the articles; footnotes and hyperlinks have been removed
for readability…
References
Other Events on this Day:
In 1429…
After hearing a series of religious revelations calling her to the defense of France during the Hundred Years’ War, 17-year-old Joan of Arc arrives in Orleans to lead the French forces to liberate the city, under siege by the English.In 1854…
Ashmun Institute (now Lincoln University), the first college for African American students, is established in Chester County, Pennsylvania.In 1898…
The first American cancer lab is established at the University of Buffalo.In 1913…
Gideon Sundback of Hoboken, New Jersey, patents the first modern zipper.In 1945…
American troops liberate the Dachau concentration camp near Munich, Germany, liberating approximately 32,000 prisoners. In a fortified bunker in Berlin, Adolf Hitler marries his longtime mistress, Eva Braun. They will reportedly commit suicide the next day.In 1968…
The counterculture musical Hair, written by and featuring James Rado and Gerome Ragni with music by Galt MacDermot, premieres on Broadway at the Biltmore Theatre for the first of 1,750 performances of the “American tribal love-rock musical.”In 1975…
American officials evacuate Saigon as North Vietnamese troops close in on Sough Vietnam’s capital.
Dates and events based on:
William J. Bennett and John Cribb, (2008) The American Patriot’s Almanac Daily Readings on America. (Kindle Edition)
Background information is from Wikipedia articles on:
Wikipedia: Lincoln University (Pennsylvania)…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_University_(Pennsylvania)
Wikipedia: Historically Black Colleges and Universities…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historically_black_colleges_and_universities
Wikipedia: Thurgood Marshall…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thurgood_Marshall
Wikipedia: Langston Hughes…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langston_Hughes
Wikipedia: Horace Mann Bond…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horace_Mann_Bond
New Georgia Encyclopedia: Education: Horace Mann Bond…
http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-3493
Brainy Quote: RIC KELLER Quotes…
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/r/ric_keller.html
Other Posts on related Topics:
Prof. Boerner’s Exploration: Black Women in History: Mary McLeod Bethune…
http://www.boerner.net/jboerner/?p=8046
Prof. Boerner’s Exploration: Black Scientist: George Washington Carver…
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