First African-American college chartered - April 29, 1854

On this day in 1854, the Ashmun Institute, now called Lincoln University, was chartered as a college for Black men.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio. Hello, Hello, everyone, Welcome to This Day in
History Class, where we bring you a new tidbit from
history every day. Today is April. The day was April

(00:24):
eighteen fifty four. The Ashman Institute, now called Lincoln University,
received its charter from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. It became
the first degree granting historically Black college and University, or HBCU,
in the country. The university was founded by John Miller

(00:46):
Dickie and his wife, Sarah Emlynn Crescent. Dickie was a
Presbyterian pastor, and Crescent was a Quaker whose family had
a history of service and philanthropy. Dickie was involved in
the American Colonization Society, a group established to help free
black people immigrate to Africa. He also contributed to the

(01:07):
liberation of Rachel and Elizabeth Parker, who were kidnapped in
the town of Oxford for sale into slavery. Before the
Civil War, it was extremely difficult to get into a
white college as a black person. Many institutions were founded
to provide black students with elementary and secondary schooling. Since

(01:29):
that education was limited for black people. A lot of
those institutions did not offer post secondary courses and programs
until the early nineteen hundreds, But in the eighteen fifties,
Dickie had been trying to get a young free black
man named James Ralston Amos into college. Amos was the

(01:49):
treasurer of the Fund for Negro church building that Richard
Allen had established at the end of the eighteenth century.
But Dickie's efforts to get Amos into Princeton University, seminary
and a religious academy ran by the Presbyterian Senate of
Philadelphia failed, so Dickie himself began preparing Amos for ministry.

(02:10):
Unhappy was Amos's inability to get into a white institution,
Dickey aimed to establish a higher education institution just for
black men. In October of eighteen fifty three, the Presbyterian
of Newcastle approved Dickie's request for quote an institution to
be called Ashman Institute for the Scientific, Classical, and Theological

(02:33):
Education of Colored Youth of the male sex. Dickie and
Crescent named Ashman Institute at their Yehudi Ashman a social
reformer who was active in the American Colonization Society. Ashman
was a US representative and governor of the colony and
Liberia that free black people were repatriated to. The Ashman

(02:56):
Institute opened to students on January one, eighteen fifty seven,
with four students enrolled. In its early years, the school's
education was based in the teachings of Christianity, and the
Newcastle Presbytery appointed trustees and faculty. Reverend John pim Carter
became the first president of the university, serving from eighteen

(03:19):
fifty six to eighteen sixty two. Since Dicky was providing
a lot of the funding from his own pockets, the
school did not have much money in the beginning. In
eighteen fifty nine, the first three graduates went to Liberia.
During the Civil War, enrollment dropped as students enlisted. Ashman
Institute was renamed Lincoln University in eighteen sixty six, not

(03:43):
long after President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. It's amended eighteen
sixty six charter increased the size of the board of
trustees from nine to one, and the maximum property holding
rights were increased. After the Civil War, support for black
higher education institutions increased. The Second Moral Act, passed in

(04:04):
eighteen ninety, targeted former Confederate States and resulted in the
establishment of public land grant institutions designated for black people
and the founding of many black land grant colleges. In
nineteen Dr Horace Mann Bond, a historian and social science researcher,
became the first black president of Lincoln University, and in

(04:28):
nineteen fifty three the university began to award women degrees.
Poet Lenston Hughes, u S, Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshal,
poet and musician Gil Scott Heron, and former Ghanaian president
qualm and Kruma are some of Lincoln's notable alumni. Though
Ashman Institute was the first degree granting black higher education institution,

(04:51):
Chaney University was the first higher education institution for black
people in America. It was founded as a secondary school
called the for An Institute in Cheney, Pennsylvania, in eighteen
thirty seven, but it did not award its first degree
until nineteen fourteen. I'm Eves Jeff Coo and hopefully you
know a little more about history today than you did yesterday.

(05:15):
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